Resistance : Fall of Man An Oral History
by DeathscytheVII
Summary: An Oral History describing the rise of the Chimera, prequel to R:FOM. Written in the style of Max Brook's World War Z
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

><p><strong>July 25, 1951<strong>

_They go by many names, such as The "Deathless Plague" or in the earliest recorded mention of them, "The Angry Night". I personally go with the official military term for them. The "Chimera". No one knows exactly where they came from, or how they came to be. But we know this for sure, they are winning. Europe and Asia have fallen, and even as I sit here now in my New York office typing this away, they are no doubt preparing for the next step, an invasion of our shores._

_My boss has advised against this, telling me how it was more important to focus on other issues such as the latest emergency wartime powers granted to the President by congress or the steady flow of refugees from Europe. They say that my work is too (expletive deleted) premature to be much use in the present. The memories were "still too fresh, with too many opinions and feelings that may obscure the true facts."_

_It might do well for future historians to have the past as cold hard data. Statistics of dead and dying, guaranteed to be free of bias, free of the human factor. But I could not agree with this. Humanity should be present in history, it is what connects us to the past and it's how we identify with it. Besides, with the Chimera knocking at our doorsteps, how can my superiors think about what future classrooms would think about this stuff? Would there even be future generations at the rate we're handling this? Perhaps even by examining this, we can finally learn something about the Chimera? To get a better picture of the puzzle._

_There are countless millions who have landed on our shores, each with their story to tell. This is a record of the greatest conflict in human history thus far, and I am resolved to have their voices heard._

_This is not a book, far from it. I realize it is a presumptuous of me to start writing a 'history' as it is still happening around me. No…this is more like a journal. A compilation of memories and scattered documents which will hopefully, in the little time we have left, give a voice to those who were silenced forever._

_This is ultimately their work, not mine. I have done my best to reserve judgment or commentary, if any human factor must be absent from these writings, let it be my own._

* * *

><p>This is an old unfinished fanfic from my old account in Paradox as TreizeV<p>

"After reading Max Brook's Magnficient "World War Z" and as a fan of "Resistance: Fall of man" I couldn't resist trying this idea out.

Essentially an oral history is a collection of interviews and first hand accounts. Hopefully I can do this justice, but this does give the added advantage of writing about whatever interests me as the day goes by. For those of you who are fans of resistance or have played it, this is a history explaining the rise of the chimera and their war in Europe. For those who haven't the slightest clue what im talking about, read on"


	2. First Accounts

**New York Harbor, New York City**

**[Even during the prewar days, the harbors of New York would be crowded to the brim by cargo ships or luxury liners. Now as I look, it is pandemonium, New York Harbor is a sea of ships. I see boats of all sizes, from dingys to yachts to full scale battleships and cruisers. It is literally a floating city, with the flags of a dozen nations, from the Tricolor of France, to the union Jack of Great Britain. Port officials put it at probably a million civilians on the Eastern Seaboard, similar flotillas are seen in Boston, Yorktown and Charleston to name a few. It is dubbed 'the largest transatlantic mass migration in history', others called it the 'shameful exodus'. Whatever the name, the scale is unprecedented. The U.S government has been slow at processing the stream of refugees that have been arriving from Europe. One of the refugees is sixty one year old Sergei Zhelyabov, former officer of the White army of the Tsar. His face is one that has been hardened by years of combat, and the Cross of St. Andrews he bears proudly on his shoddy coat tells of his pride as a decorated officer of Imperial Russia's highest order]**

Some people, 'historians' mind you, claim that this war was Russia's fault to begin with. That the Tsar's imperialist government had led its people into the bloody meat grinder like the uneducated lemmings we were, and we were slaughtered. I know that you people in the west have always patronized us, dismissed us as 'uneducated serfs', literally brutes that understood nothing but force. Then they go about offering us advice on how we can better 'liberate' ourselves? I say to hell with them! They will never see, never understand the strength of our traditions, our history. We had a Tsar once that tried and listened to the calls for emancipation, or the so called constitutional process, and look where that has got him? Blown to bits by an anarchist's bomb. He was a good man, but god gave him a fitting end, to be destroyed by the very forces of liberalism he unleashed. Remember, this all happened while the very same western countries who pushed us for reform exploited the motherland, taking away our claims in the Crimea and Asia. No…we did not need democracy, we needed unity, order and strength, and the Tsar gave us that.

I do not expect you to understand.

**Did this feeling result in the rise of xenophobia in Russia and the banning of all communications, contact and travel with the West?**

I would not say it was inevitable, despite what you may think, we believed we still had much to learn from the West, especially in terms of your Military techniques and organization. We're not that uncivilized you know? You can wrap it all you want in fancy polite language, but the prestige of an empire's army is measured by how efficiently it can kill their neighbours.

**[He smirks, downs a shot of vodka as he stares outside his cabin porthole]  
><strong>  
>No, I think the real tipping point was the French and the Krauts. Trying to incite insurrection within our borders. We understood that the end of the Great War meant the end of the German and Austrian Empires but there were still the die hard 'liberalists', who believed monarchy as a system of government was at an end. It infuriated them that Russia was strong enough to survive on her own and that we did not need to be a part of the newly formed 'European Trade Organization'. Still, it would have been fine if they had left it alone at that.<p>

**You are referring to the Bolshevik Uprising?**

Not just that, but the damn propaganda leaflets and funding and arms the French and German governments have been giving the insurrectionists…. They won't admit it, hell I'm pretty sure they forgot about it today, but a lot of Russian blood is on their hands.

**but the revolt was eventually suppressed**

Yes, only after we sealed off our borders. Only then did we discover the true depth of European intervention. Had their supplies continued flowing….Imagine what would have happened if we had lost at the Battle of Tsaritsyn? (*prewar estimates of casualties range from 50,000-70,000 dead) I cannot see myself saluting a Bolsheveik, let alone living in a Russia under them? They preach equality, but in truth they are little better than bandits. A great many of us were relieved when they sent their ringleader to Siberia in exile.

**[He spits]**

But yes, after the settling of the civil war, the Tsar decided it was time to end the treachery once and for all, and that was not just loping off a few heads and sending the rest to Siberia mind you. The Tsar was wary of all the 'anti-imperialist' propaganda and infiltration along our borders. The Third Department agreed as well, it was time for a more 'permanent' solution.

**[What is now known in the west as the Red Curtain (established in 1920)]**

Yes.

Can you imagine? A barbed wire barrier stretching from the Baltic to the Danube? Reinforced by steel bunkers, concrete walls and miles upon miles of minefields and anti-tank trenches and infantry pillboxes. They said it was longer than the Great Wall of China, the greatest engineering feat in history. It certainly did a better job of keeping the Huns out.

It was the first permanent mass closure of a border in history. All railroad lines with the west were destroyed, all bridges blown and all passes sealed. There would be no communication, no trade, no travel. The only contact would be through the rigid diplomatic protocols in St. Petersburg. This was to prevent the Europeans from exploiting our people, the Tsar would deal with the western powers only on a face to face basis.

**Was this also around the time when the disappearances first occurred?**

_Nyet_, there was no mention of any disturbance in the regions for the next few years after we established the Red Curtain, if anything the Russian People were content to be cut off from the west, lest they defile our holy motherland. No, I think the first incident reported was around the mid 1920s, and even then it took time to investigate.

**Why is that?**

You should know by now Russia, especially Siberia, is a vast place. One of the difficulties in our position was the lack of infrastructure. My battalion was assigned to Vladivostok, the worst shit hole assignment you can imagine. There was one railway line connecting us with the West, and if we were lucky a train with our letters would arrive once a month. Aside from that, my men had to rely on sleds, and when the spring thaw came, our own two feet. One patrol in the interior took my men at least five weeks before we covered the whole area.

We were just about to be reassigned to the Crimea, which was bliss compared to trekking the wastelands of Siberia. I was an old man by then, and I could've used the rest for my bones. But then one day we had a young villager enter our camp. A young boy, who spoke in some Asian dialect I couldn't understand. My sergeant managed to find a translator. There had been an accident, an illness. Everyone in the village was dead, they wouldn't move. The local colonel, some fat bastard who decided we had nothing better to do, decided to send us down.

I had a hell of a time trying to find the place. Officially it was a small village that did not exist on the map. Even finding that took us days, asking directions from the locals like some kind of stupid tourist. The boy himself was young, and did not know the country too well.

When we reached his village, a collection of small huts in a forest, they were gone. I didn't mean the village, but the _bodies_. Everything was intact, the food on their tables, the pots and pans, even the sheets on their bed were made. Yet there were no people, no animals. There was no explanation. That was when we started getting pissed off, one of my corporals pinned the boy down on the ground, demanding the truth. He had led us on a wild goose chase when we could have been sleeping on the train on our way back to the Crimea. But the boy merely repeated what he said tearfully, that he had went out of the village for his errands, and when he came back, they were all lying motionless on the ground, like in a coma. Now they were gone...

We reported back to our colonel, who casually replied that the villagers are acting up again. Third straight incident this week. He either accused them of fleeing across the border to the south, or just vanishing into the forests to avoid their taxes. Either way, he threw my report on with the rest on his desk.

They said that we should have told the world what was going on in Russia, hell, as if we knew ourselves? How can anyone….[pause] How could anyone foresee what was about to happen?

**[Records retrieved by the British SIS now confirmed that Russian command had knowledge of at least a dozen villages that had mysteriously 'vanished'. By 1926, it was estimated that the number had quadrupled. The extent of the Russian investigation into this matter remains a mystery to this day.]**


	3. The Tunguska Hypothesis

**Reykjavik Naval Base, Iceland (Temporary HQ for the Allied North Atlantic Fleet)**

**[With the fall of Europe, Allied command has been busy converting Iceland into a floating fortress, a buttress and early warning system against any Chimera invasion. Even from the airplane, I see the multitude of anti-aircraft guns, land-based turrets jutting from the island. While concrete and steel defenses augmented Iceland's cliffs. I almost didn't recognize the island from the last time I visited, it made for an eerie sight at night, with literally thousands of searchlights stabbing into the skies. Searching for any signs of Chimeran attack. Almost all the civilians had been evacuated weeks ago, now in their place were American troops and British troops under the command of Admiral Cunningham. All sensors are running, radar, sonar, radio waves, even the Icelandic Meteorological Office's Geophysics Department was called in to provide support, to report any significant seismic activity. Seismologist and Geographer, Katrín Baldursdóttir was one of those drafted. She calmly looks over her equipment, which she observes in her ten hour shifts for any sign of activity from Europe]**

There are many theories offered on the origins of the Chimera, some that they were buried deep within the Earth, unleashed when some mining expedition tapped into their hideout. Another story I hear that is quite popular was that they were a bio-weapon designed by the Russians, which turned on them. Myself, I don't subscribe to any of those theories, what was it that your Sherlock Holmes said? "Eliminate all the impossibilities, and what you have left...however improbable, is the truth?"

**Close Enough**

But yes, when you consider the first two alternatives. How would the Chimera fit into Darwin's scheme of evolution? If the Chimera were somehow related to anything that had been on Earth, why haven't we discovered a similar life form anywhere else? If that were true we'd be all Chimera now, as they surely qualify in the game of 'survival of the fittest'. What kind of untapped, undiscovered evolutionary species suddenly develops the wherewithal to launch a fullscale industrial war? To literally know how to build and run a mechanized army overnight? There is nothing 'natural' about them, nothing of this world. And don't even get me started on that. I'm under fire enough as it is.

The second theory sounds even more ridiculous, but it is widely supported by conspiracy theorists, how the western wall was part of an elaborate plot by Russian high command. They say it was all just a way of protecting the Russians from the disease they were planning to unleash beyond their borders. And how they would wait out the next few years for all of Europe to die before picking up the pieces. The Russians...They couldn't even get their heads together when it came to building the wall on their borders, even that took them five years to finish after it was officially 'completed'. How and why would they develop a bioweapon? They were far from our friends, but they weren't monsters. I give them the benefit of the doubt here. I mean no offense to the Russian scientific community of course, but even for us, mustard gas was as close to a bioweapon that we got. I can't imagine any mind on Earth conjuring the Chimera.

**So that's how you came to your famous 'Tunguska hypothesis'.**

Please, it was hardly famous. It was rejected by the University, the powers that be, for being too 'outlandish and ridiculous.' After all, who believes in aliens nowadays? You'd be surprised. Didn't some guy in England do a cruel joke in the 30s about some alien landing, a 'war of the world's' broadcast? I believe the ratio was that out of six million listeners, at least a fifth actually believed it to be true. Anyways, my point is, it isn't that far of a stretch from people's imagination if you think about it.

The Tunguska episode all the more confirmed it for me.

**How so?**

Nothing like it was ever recorded in history, not to mention everything can be traced to it, the 'Red Volga' incident of the 20s, the vanishing villages. All this can be traced to that damn giant explosion in 1908.

**Could you elaborate?**

Tunguska was an isolated section of Siberia, in fact, it is a river. No settlements, no outposts, just thousands of miles of trees and wildlife. Then in 1908, something big happened.

**[She claps her hands together for emphasis]**

I was not there per say, but I did read the accounts, saw the photographs. People saw a column of bluish light above Lake Baikal, almost as bright as the sun. Within minutes, everyone felt the explosion, and I mean everyone. It was reported that people were blown off their feet and that every window within a few hundred miles exploded, and these were people that weren't even there!

We had seismometers back then, the ones we used to measure the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. This was before I joined the institute, no Richter scales back then like we have now, but even those primitive instruments were able to pick up something in Iceland from a source as far away as Siberia, thousands of miles away. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire Eurasian continent literally 'shook' that day.

It was unbelievable. For nine hundred square miles, every tree was flattened. As if god himself had made his mark on the land. Quite a sight, I almost wish I was there to see it. Maybe it was an asteroid? A comet? But then where was the crater? The thing literally exploded five miles above the Earth's surface. Surely there would be some trace of it on the ground? I hear many theories, such as how a comet made a natural hydrogen bomb when it mixed with the gases in our atmosphere, or the UFO theory.

Myself, once I joined the Institute, I had planned a sabbatical to Tunguska, but never got to it. The start of the Great War with Germany put a halt to my plans. In hindsight it was probably a good thing, I might have wounded up as one of the missing as well, the Red curtain didn't help matters much either.

**And you believed the Chimera lay dormant for the next thirty years?**

At this point, it sounds more plausible than the other 'outlandish' theories. Maybe something in the asteroid delivered their spores to our planet? Maybe they had to gestate or hibernate while they adapted to our climate? Who knows. I'm just a seismologist, I'm certain a biologist who did any work on the Chimera can tell you a lot more, now? I'm just an observer, looking back at it, maybe there was something we could do, but when you consider the distances and the political situation, what could we have done? Even with the knowledge?

**[She stares back at her instruments, an array of seismic detectors and sonar, listening for any signs of life or activity from Europe. There is nothing. Dead silence.]**

**[Scientists, to this day, have not fully determined the nature and cause of the Tunguksa incident]**


	4. The Red Volga Incident

_"And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. " - Revelations 16:3,4_

_[Message found posted on the church doors of several deserted Villages during what became known as the "Red Volga" incident]_

**New Haven, Connecticut**

**[The Yale-New Haven Hospital has recently been expanded, with a new capacity of over 1,000 new beds to deal with the new influx of refugees from Europe. Even in the Pre-War days, it was ranked among the best hospitals in the world, in both its sophisticated equipment and its diagnosticians in disease. Eva Kellerman's room is on the top floor, in the world's first intensive healthcare unit, one of the innovations to come out of the war. The Doctors respectfully call her 'the warrior', having battled her illness for the better part of two decades. She lies in a completely sterilized room, monitored and given doses of medication by doctors around the clock. She is visibly pale, and her body weak and frail. This however, is contrasted by the energy and liveliness she exhibits during our conversation. I expect nothing less from a former Red Cross worker.]**

We had our critics, officials and others who regarded us mostly as annoyances. After all, how was our goal realistic? They would say. Given the hatred in today's world, could we have made a difference? I keep telling them that wasn't our point, that was not the reason I joined the Red Cross in the first place.

To protect human life, just human life, without any discrimination in regard to religion, creed, race or class. It was that simple, yet it was revolutionary, perhaps one of the most noble ideas to come out of a battlefield. It was the one rule I based my entire career on, my life's work and I never looked back. If anyone had to question why we did it, it was no use convincing them otherwise, they would never understand.

We had our supporters of course, there were people who call us heroes, and I wish that were true. Not to sound too stereotypical, but the heroes were the ones we left behind in Europe, the ones who refused to leave even with the Chimera knocking at their door. I'm sure you heard the stories of Marcel Junod, the man who single handedly convinced the French government to process five thousand 'undesirables', Jews, Gypsies and others to the United States; to get them off the continent at a time when the boats were only taking people with money or those of the same race, religion or some other ridiculous reason. I know this is stupid, but the panic in the days of the Chimeran invasion showed the worst humanity had to offer. I've heard the stories, about the massacres, the panic and the rioting. But it always lightens my heart that for every psychopath or monster out there, there was one person like Marcel, trying their best to save as many as possible.

I think the saddest part was that Marcel never forgave himself for saving only five thousand, and in the end that killed him. I read the last reports from the International Red Cross committee, how they last saw him at the harbor in Bordeaux, directing refugees onto the ships even as the Chimera were breaking into the city.  
><strong><br>[She pauses…. clasping her hands weakly, a look of pain and regret on her face.]**

To my shame, I was not there, I couldn't have been there. My last assignment made sure of that. I tried to go, urge the doctors to give me a brief reprieve, one month, I'd be there and back once I did _something_, so I could at least look back at this and say that I didn't sit here twiddling my thumbs….in the end, the doctors won, as you can see.

**Can you tell me a bit about your last assignment?**

It was not a normal humanitarian aid assignment to be sure. For one thing, the Russian government had closed all official communication with the outside world. The Red Curtain was an effective wall. There was no way of smuggling information in and out simply because there was no traffic allowed pass the wall. Period.

We found out about the incident from our contacts in Armenia where we had our own delegates working on the latest humanitarian crisis in the area, involving the last Turkish-Armenian war. It was there where we saw the first Russian representatives, asking for aid and supplies. Apparently they came a long way, having sailed down the Caspian from Astrakhan.

**The Russian Government was asking for aid?**

Not the Tsarist government. They were too proud and stubborn in their self imposed isolation. No, I believe this was the local governor in charge of the Ukraine region.

He was a small nervous man, and I'll always remember how he spoke to us that night, sketchy details about a major catastrophe and how St. Petersburg was not sending them enough supplies to deal with the influx of patients and bodies.

**Bodies?**

By the time they had contacted us, the disaster had already engulfed the Kazan region, as well as Saratov and Volgograd, almost every major city along the Volga had been affected. It was already one of the worst humanitarian crisises of the century.

**It took that long before the governor considered contacting you?**

Since Russia's isolationist policy prevented them from reaching out to governments, the governor had no means of contacting the outside world. It was only when he heard of our latest mission in Armenia that he decided to contact the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross). We were a neutral organization, but we were still foreigners, so the governor was still nervous at having to meet with us at all.

**And this was how you came to the 'Red Volga' incident **

Eventually we did. I say that because the Russians were still paranoid about any foreigners. We had to undergo various screens of security checks, passport checks and body searches. Considering the amount of short notice we've been given and the lack of available supplies on hand, we were lucky to even get there two weeks later.

The first thing I noticed about the Volga was that it had a reddish brown color to it. Not the kind that you would mistake for mud. No, it was something completely different. It was almost like something from the plagues of Egypt, with the rivers running red with blood.

The most disturbing thing however, was the lack of activity or life on the river. This was one of Russia's lifeblood rivers, the ones they used for trade and food. All we saw along the way were deserted villages, each one completely empty of civilians. We assumed they had been evacuated, but still, it had an eerie feel to it. The whole carpet of dead fish and dolphins didn't help either.

**The Whole River?**

Every square mile of the river was covered with at least some form of carcass, whether it was fish, dolphins, or…god help us, people, Those who were unlucky enough to get caught in the 'slick', as we called it. Many of the bodies had washed up on the beaches, and were being carried into the churches. It was not all orderly however, there was mass panic. This one woman kept screaming that Armageddon was approaching, while some were pinning pamphlets to the doors of houses. Others just had enough, packed all their valuables into a cart and made way for the highway, we saw a lot of discarded luggage, clothes and valuables scattered about the countryside.

Despite all the panic, we started by doing what we came to do, setting up a main hospital to deal with the inflow of sick patients, all who had come into contact with the water. It was then that we became worried. The damn Russians! Choosing convenience over common sense, I know they wanted us to get there quickly, but couldn't they think of a better way than just sending us down the same river that was causing all these deaths?

**So most of your staff became infected as well?**

We did not have any symptoms initially, but we thought we were becoming infected, something with the water? But even then we never touched the water during the boat ride. So we supposed it was something in the air. Most of us began wearing face masks to protect us, but in hindsight, that was a useless measure.

**Can you describe these symptoms?**

The most common symptom in most of the patients was violent coughing, often coughing up phlegm with signs of blood in it. They all seemed very malnourished as well. We thought it was a virus so we gave them what we could, antibiotics to kill whatever was in them. In the end, I don't think we made much of a difference. We asked the Russian authorities how long the river was like this for, and the man replied to me, with a straight face, that they had been like this for several months. Months! And only now did they seek our help. I didn't want to think it at that time, but it may have already been too late for those people.

We stayed for a few weeks, setting up our infirmaries to deal with even more patients that were coming in from the cities. By then however, we were out of supplies, and the Russians realized that we could do nothing more to help them, so they sent us away. Can you believe that? If we had a few more weeks, perhaps we might have had more time to call in some doctors, or even set up more beds! But the Tsarist government had heard of our activities there, and within days, we were sent a notice to leave Russian territory immediately, or we would be evicted with 'extreme prejudice'. As if we hadn't enough already.

I found that the worst part. It took the Russian government less than a week to respond to our presence here, but they sat on their fat comfy chairs in the St. Petersburg doing nothing for these poor suffering peasants, their _own people_ for the last few months. It was...there is no other word for it...it was _sickening._

As we packed up, one of our staff members managed to sneak in a photograph (Russian authorities had confiscated all cameras at the checkpoints), hoping that it would provide some answers if he showed it to his friends at the University of Princeton. He also took a sample of the water in a jar, hoping it would yield something through scientific analysis.  
><strong><br>[She shows me the Photograph]**

**It was only after we reached Armenia that the first of us starting becoming sick with the very same symptoms. It was also at that point that I didn't start to feel very well….**

**[She pauses]**

Would I have done the same thing again? Knowing the outcome? Absolutely. We Red Cross Workers dedicated our lives to preserving and aiding human life. If I could take any comfort from our work in the Volga, it was that we at least made the last moments of a few more people as comfortable as possible. I just wish….I just wish we knew what we were dealing with at that time.

**[The Famous "Red Volga" Water Sample taken by the late staff member was found to have contained large amounts of Radon, approximately 1,000 times above the normal quantities found in natural environments. Eva Kellerman died five days after this interview from advanced stage lung cancer.]**


	5. First Contact : The Forgotten War

**Des Moines, Iowa**

**[This is my first visit to the refugee camps of Ohio River Valley, organized by Congress and spread throughout America to cope with the flow of refugees. As I pass through the countryside, I see thousands of people of all nationalities working the fields, results of a job retraining program for those who could not find work in their news country. One of these workers is an Old Russian, one of the few lucky ones to escape his native country. He refuses to give me his name, only that he be identified as 'Vasily'. He speaks with an uneasy twitching on his face, attributing it to 'shellshock' he received during the war.]**

I began my career in the Russian Far East Fleet, as a book keeper, not the most exciting of prospects but it was a decent honest job. Granted, there was not much to keep considering the last defeat our navy suffered at the hands of the Japs. It was really just a fleet on paper. Almost the ships were lost in the last war save for a cruiser and several destroyers. All we had were a bunch of stranded sailors.

I guess that would explain why none of us bothered asking why the governor decided to form us into combat battalions. Hell, I volunteered myself! The training was basic, consisting of several months of digging latrines and drill, but it was nothing I was unaccustomed to in the Navy. Soon after, our battalion was transferred from Vladivostok to the mainland, around the city of Yakutsk. We were around a thousand men in all, piled into trains heading towards the depths of Siberia. At that point some of us were beginning to joke about why a prized battalion such as us was being transferred _away_from the border and into the interior. We suspected a war with the Japs again, but high command kept us in the dark about almost everything.

When we arrived at Yakutsk, the first thing we noticed was that there were barely any civilians around. More to the point, the entire city was fortified like a military camp, with barbed wire fences and guards posted around the perimeter, armed with rifles and machine guns. There were even spotlights for good measure. It felt less like walking into a city and more like walking into a military camp, or a city under siege. The only great puzzle for us back then was why fortify this city, deep within the supposedly secure parts of our empire? The other thing I'll remember from that day was the freezing cold and the heavy snowfall.

Don't get me wrong, Russia is cold, Siberia is literally hell frozen over, but it was mid July when my battalion transferred to Yakutsk. It should have at least been comfortable for us, but I've seen men in my battalion, those who have served in Siberia during the Winter, telling us navy men that this was a hell of a lot colder than usual. That was one of the first things that got us worried.

We did not know of the disappearing villages at the time. We were completely isolated from the neighboring towns and villages, being an army base and all. There were no newspapers, no letters or mailbags. It was, as our superiors called it, essential for the empire's security. A lot of the men were indignant about it, but we were all good soldiers and eventually settled into the barracks, with orders to mobilize at any time. We made the best of it, getting drunk at the town pub while our colonel and his officers were briefed in a closed door meeting in the town hall.

Our stay was short. We expected a boring monotonous routine, but within two days of entering into the base, our officers gave our battalion the first orders. An arms convoy heading into Siberia had been ambushed by someone.

**Did they tell you at the start?**

We got the impression that it was either bandits or insurgents. It made sense, Siberia, in many ways, was as lawless and dangerous as your American Wild West. The men thought so, and it was our duty to bring them down. We were also required to escort a convoy of our own, to arm the surrounding villages against these bandits.

Our patrol took us into the mountains, where we passed by several villages. It was an odd routine for us. We were hauling a train of wagons with us, each one filled to the brim with rifles and ammunition. Any village we passed by we grounded packs and waited for our officers to meet with the officials. We also questioned everyone we encountered. Without exception. Everyone.

**What kind of Questions did you asked?**

We asked them if they had seen anything or heard anything suspicious around the countryside, or if any members of their family were missing from other villages. The first one sounded right enough when tracking bandits, but the second one puzzled us greatly. Were these insurgents running a kidnapping ring now? The town leaders themselves, were greatly disturbed, even after we handed them rifles to defend themselves with. We also left detachments of companies to guard the towns, as well as secure our line of communications with Yakutsk.

Eventually we passed some abandoned villages, and this was the most chilling part of the patrol for us. Everything was covered in a foot of snow, completely shrouded in white, as though no one had been there for days. The officers would have us inspect all the houses to see if there was any sign of violence. But in almost all cases we found nothing. The beds were made and the food was out on the table, but no one was home, the stove and fireplaces were all burnt out, no one had replaced the logs. We sent out more patrols, marking on the map the abandoned villages we found.

Eventually we made our way to another nameless village, which my colonel predicted would be the next point of attack for the insurgents. The men of my battalion were completely ready to take these monsters on, but the officers insisted we wait. Something about understanding the enemy's 'modus operandi' or some phrase like that. So we set up camp at a mountain ridge overlooking the village. A lot of the men were uneasy, using civilians as live bait.

The night was quiet when the remaining men in our battalion, roughly five hundred, slept in our dugouts. It was a tough job hiding a battalion this large from plain sight of a sleepy little village such as that, but our colonel must have been a veteran of the last war because our dugouts and camp were organized without flaw, unnoticeable to the naked eye of the villagers who were at least several miles away from us. The men stood guard all night, watching the fires and lights from the villagers, shivering our asses off in the snow and silently cursing the lucky bastards in the village with a warm bed and meal.

It was then that we heard the sound.

It was not noticeable at first, but silently built up over time, like a wave. We thought it was the sound of a cricket chirping, or some kind of insect, but eventually it multiplied, like a locust was swarming the region. It was too dark to see, and the lights of the villages were still on, but we began hearing shouts from the valley, faint screams.

It was then that our colonel decided it was time to suit up. Our men emerged from our hiding places, rifles cocked and ready. Two companies were to lead the counter attack, to what…we did not know, there certainly weren't any rifle shots coming from the village, but we decided it was time to act, because whatever was going on in the region was happening right now down there.

**Did you catch a glimpse of the attackers?**

No. By the time we reached the village, at least ten to twenty minutes later. It was over. Just like before, there were no signs of disturbance in the houses. However this time was different. We saw the people.

They lay prostrate on the ground, men, women and children of all ages, as if in a coma. None of them were moving or making a sound. It was like they all dropped what they were doing and fainted just like that.

The medics went to work, but they weren't able to revive anyone. It was unsettling to say the least, seeing hundreds of these people just lying on the ground like corpses.

**So what did you do next?**

We thought we were too late, and in hindsight, we were. So our first thought was to bury the villagers and seek to warn the next ones. But our Colonel approached the situation more logically. Whoever did this took the time to clear the bodies out of the village after each attack, so we would stick by and see. That surprised a lot of us. None of us wanted to spend the rest of the night guarding dead bodies.

**So did you stay?**

Ultimately the battalion split up. Three companies would stay and look while the rest would warn the neighboring villagers.

I got the short end of the straw, as you Americans say, I stayed.

We set up shop inside one of the town barns. It had a second floor overlooking the village street, while snipers were also posted on the roofs of the houses. It was after midnight, and all a hundred and fifty of us sat there and waited.

It's not easy to understand how pissed off we were at our colonel. We could have been sleeping by now in a warm bed with a warm meal at base, but instead we were camping our asses out in freezing cold weather overlooking some stiff frozen corpses?

Then they came.

It was by ones or twos a first, barely a trickle. But these figures started emerging from the woods with wagons. It was at that time that the men in the barn quieted down. Some whispered whether they could make out the figures.

It was almost impossible you see, even with the light of the houses, these strangers wore ragged cloaks, covering their faces and bodies. All we did know however, was that they wasted no time going to work, piling the bodies indiscriminately into the wagons.

It sickened me to watch, like some sort of harvest. This skinny ragged figure just threw a little girl and her grandmother into a cart as though they were both just sacks of grain, or worse. They piled them on top of each other, almost certainly crushing those beneath. The snipers signaled to the colonel they were ready to fire, but he shook his head, content to observe a bit longer.

The men were still watching, but I had enough. I took my carbine and ran out the barn, right into the middle of the street where these….things were doing their business. I don't recall what happened next, but I shouted something at one of the figures, raised my rifle at him, my comrades in the barn holding their breath. But the person literally ignored me, piling the bodies onto the wagons as though I wasn't there.

That pissed me off right there, I told the person to stop what he was doing and put up his hands. I wasn't a police officer or anything, so the next step was to hit the figure in the head with the butt of my carbine. It was then where he went crazy. He snarled like some wild animal and lunged at me, trying to bite me. I didn't get a good look at his face because of the light, but his eyes were lifeless and white, and for a skinny bugger he was incredibly strong, knocked me down onto the ground before one of my comrades plugged a bullet between his eyes. He fell to the ground, his rags coming off as well.

The 'man' was half naked from waist up, he wore standard army boots and pants, but there was something wrong with his face, his eyes were bulging straight out of their sockets, his skin resembled that of a lizard…some kind of greenish brown color and scaly too. Hell I don't know if that's even a proper description, you have to see them for yourselves. Another thing that puzzled me was how the hell he kept warm considering he wore literally nothing.

We had no clue what the hell they were, all we knew was, these things weren't, or probably were human. The rest of the company burst into the streets now, shooting at these things in the cloaks, basically anything that moved. For all their ferocity, they moved like zombies, all staggered and slow, but once they caught you…I saw a few of our men get pinned down that night and literally torn apart by them. A few of the other rookies were breaking down already, these things…they had no fear. They never stopped walking towards us even as we shot them down. It was too much for some of the men. A few panicked from the start and fled into the woods. I don't think we ever saw them again. We heard more snarls and noises coming from the darkness of the woods, this time followed more rifle fire, even machine gun fire. The whole village was lighting up from the exchange. But this time, some of our own men were falling to the bullets. My colonel shouted frantically into the woods, "друзья! остановитесь!" But the shooting continued. It was then that we noticed more of these creatures in the wood, only this time they were carrying firearms, confiscated or stolen, either from the dead bodies or from the convoys. The boys took a hard hitting from these ones, they were different. More bulkier and faster than the ones we saw first, and they looked nothing like a human. I tried to rally the men but before I knew it, one of the creatures had come up behind me. The last thing I remember was the distinct crack of the rifle on my head, followed by my comrades' guns going off on the creature. Then everything went white.

**[He takes off his cap, showing me the large scar that was left on the back of his head]**

I came to at the Military hospital back at Yakutsk. I vaguely remember the nurse injecting me with medicine. Next to me, were men of my battalion, or what was left of my unit, while some officers were standing at the doorway, talking about evacuating to the East and some other things I never heard.

I learned later. Apparently the colonel had ordered us to pull back, our battalion had fought all the way back to Yakutsk, now finding these things in every deserted village. I thanked god that I was lucky enough to have some of my comrades drag me all the way back here. I can't imagine what they would have done to me if I had remained….just like those villagers and the men we left behind.

We were given strict orders as well, to never talk to this to anyone outside the battalion, not even amongst ourselves. Hell! It's not like something I could just forget with a snap of a finger. The men were starting to become worried now, many of us had families in the West, and all the men were eager to get home. Was this the best our leaders could do? Order us to forget about it? As though it never existed!

We had found our enemy, but it was too late. Our leadership was paralyzed, the troops too shaken up by what they saw. By that time, they were strong enough to attack in force, and several cities had already fallen to the enemy. The things that would only show their faces at night.  
><strong><br>[Casualties in what was known as 'the forgotten war' have never been officially released or accurately recorded for that matter. All that is known by the allied intelligence agencies is that the Russian government probably launched their counter offensive somewhere in the late 30s. The few scattered accounts and descriptions from that period have led many to hypothesize that the 'humanoid' Chimera were probably still in the early stages of their evolution at that point in time.]**


	6. The Blackout and the Runner

**Toronto, The Dominion of Great Britain and Canada**

**[Toronto's bustling population boasts thousands of new British immigrants that settle in the urban and rural outskirts of the city, expanding it to several times its pre-war size. This proves to be one of the greatest achievements of Operation Avalon One; the successful evacuation of a large number of civilians from the Former British Isles. It is here in Toronto, the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force and the new home for the Royal family, where I meet Sir Archibald Campbell during one of my assignments at the House of Commons.]**

To be honest, I don't know what to make of it really. The new situation. Before we diplomats were held to be sacrosanct. We were the power brokers between the powers that took part in the great game. No politician will admit that of course, but those blokes get off on the fact that they have the destinies of millions of people in their hands. I think Lord Acton summed it up best…'power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.'

Oh dear, I'm drabbling on again aren't I?

**It's alright. Perhaps you can tell me a bit about the current situation. How is it so different?**

Well, for starters, the very purpose of the diplomatic corps, in my opinion, is to maintain the balance of power, and to do our very best to avoid a disastrous war. We do our best to preserve the status quo among nations in terms of their power whenever possible. Our naval policy was obvious, to have the more ships than any two of our potential enemies combined, we intended to keep it that way. The Great war was the closest to failure we've ever been, but luckily we managed to right the ship, so to speak, with Versailles and the formation of the ETO (European Trade Organization)

Of course, there are those that say that such things are utter bollocks. Bullets talk, and flowery phrases walk. According to them, we were simply the extension of the will of the state. If our state decided to go to war for the hell of it, then we diplomats were expected by our superiors to lie through our teeth to make sure that the situation remained the most advantageous for us at every moment. I can't say that I personally subscribe to that view; I believe we have a duty to civilization and to our history to ensure future generations never suffer the unnecessary scourge of war. But ask any person on the street and I am probably a minority.

The main problem with the current situation however, is not ideological, it is logistical. An odd word from a diplomat no? But that's true. Before the war, the diplomatic corps had built up intelligence networks as well as relationships with the ruling elites of each country. It gave Great Britain a great advantage when dealing with our neighbors simultaneously and allowed us an effective intelligence service during the Great War. The Chimera changed all that, they literally destroyed the system overnight. There were no diplomatic overtures from them or any territorial demands. They wanted it all. The rules of extraterritoriality or international law didn't apply to them. They just consumed the countries in their path. One by one, our networks in the East and Europe were snuffed out. The embassies in Russia were the first to go, it was the first true diplomatic blackout we ever experienced with a great power, and it disturbed Parliament greatly.

During wars you see, governments can at least expect their enemies to treat their envoys with a certain level of respect. That did not apply to the Chimera. I pity the poor sods that were sent over to Russia to 'negotiate' with them back when we still thought they could be reasoned with.

**[He shakes his head]**

Now our job is a simple one, to unite the remaining countries into the Alliance. This was the hardest part.

The end of the war in Europe left our department in tatters; half of our men were lost to the invasion, while those that escaped suddenly found the training and knowledge they had accumulated during their careers had become irrelevant. What's the use of knowing the power brokers in the German Republic if the whole country was destroyed? So what if you had ties with the Grand Admiral of Italy? That country fell before we even had a chance to piss our pants at the Chimera. How can a diplomat claim knowing polish is an asset when the entire population of forty million was literally consumed in a matter of days? There's no one bloody left who can speak Polish now!

As you can see, we had to restructure our department a bit, reassign people and relearn some skills and languages. Spanish and Portugese became essential, considering the other remaining allies available to us are in South America. A good chunk of South America is still opposed to us, some stupid issue about exploitation and anger over colonialism. It simply astonishes me, mankind is about to be wiped off the face of the planet and yet they can't let go of old hatreds. I admit we had a fair hand to play in their misery, but survival should be a common goal for all.

And those damned Yanks, don't get me started, they're worse. Have you heard of the AAA? The Alliance for American Autonomy? They're the dissents. The ones who wanted to keep America isolated at all costs, avoiding all wars and associations with outside countries. They're the ones your paper covers, the ones who bomb army recruiting stations and military bases just because they want to keep America out of the war. I'd like to ship a few of those tossers back to Europe and have them see first hand this isn't just about America anymore. It's about the future of humanity.

**[He sighs. Visibly stressed]**

Sorry I must be going off track again.

**No need to apologize, I hear you were one of the last diplomats to visit the court of Tsar Mikhail, perhaps you can shed some light on what it was like.**

I was assigned to the court in the mid thirties, so by then the western wall had already been built, and we were treated to a very 'warm' reception. The reception, I admit, was better than I expected, they had the courtesy to offer me food and water every once in a while.

**[He chuckles]**

Ah yes, the good ole days before the war. If I had any word for it, I would describe it as the equivalent of being a political prisoner. I barely had any communication with anyone outside the palace, I was monitored by guards every waking moment. My first audience with Tsar Mikhail was when he invited me to witness an execution. The Bolshevik prisoners that were captured in the civil war.

The Tsar was hard man, with an iron will, and he demonstrated it to me as he had the prisoners hang each other in succession, with the last one having his head chopped off with an executioner's axe. It was brutal, it was effective, it summed up the impression Tsar wanted me to leave with. Quite a dapper fellow I'll give him that.

It has something to do with the Russian psyche you see. In their history, strong Tsars were those that did not hesitate to use their authoritarian powers to show off their strength. Why do you think figures such as Nicholas I and Catherine the Great are so admired? While the more liberal Tsars met their end at the chopping block? Who cares if in reality the Tsars commanded inefficient bureaucracies and outdated armies? The true strength of Russia is in the absolute power of the Tsar, and his willingness to use that power.

**Did he ever conduct any affairs of state with you?**

Once, just the once, when I was sent to enquire about the recent disturbances in the east. Unofficially we had a few of our spies go missing in the interior and I wanted to discover if they had been found out. Officially, I was supposed confirm the safety of the British red cross workers that had snuck back into Russia to help with their 'crisis'. Not that there was any notion of a crisis in court, no one dared utter a word about anything in front of the Tsar.

I did however, notice a pattern during my last days there, St. Petersburg became more and more like an armed camp. With several Russian divisions setting up camp on the outskirts of the city. I thought to myself that the Tsar must be preparing for war with someone, Finland came to my mind instantly. So I reported back to my government. The oddest thing to me however, was that all the Russian artillery, trenches and guns pointed towards the East, whereas the Finns were to the North and West. I thought back then that the Russians were foolish to think the Finns would try to attack them at all. How wrong I was eh?

Eventually, my snooping was too much for the Iron Tsar, so he officially cut off the last diplomatic tie with the British Empire. Good riddance, I thought, to say the least. I wanted to go back to England, away from the constant snow that seemed to dominate the Russian landscape. Parliament however, decided I was of some further use so they reassigned me to Estonia.

**Did the Russians ever communicate to you the existence of the Chimera?**

I didn't even receive a word of anything as they packed my belongings and shipped me off. I don't know what the Tsar was thinking but he was a bit daft in the head if you asked me. Too much pride, too little sense.

**Did they ever find out what happened to him?**

There was no battle of St. Petersburg to be sure, at least, not in the official alliance Intel records. Either he evacuated himself by hiding among his subjects or he never managed to escape. A lot of Russians at first, thought the cold was their great advantage against their enemy. How unfortunate it was for them when the Ivans discovered that they actually _thrived_in it.

**So no warnings at all?**

This period was called 'The Blackout' for a reason. **[He chuckles]**

If you want to call it that, the closest thing to a warning was during my time in Estonia. There had been a raging blizzard for several weeks, and because of the weather the mail and correspondence from St. Petersburg had ceased completely, traffic was nonexistent and many people, even animals froze to death in the forests and towns all over Scandinavia and Lithuania. For months we were in the dark about what was happening back east, then one day he showed up.

The man, I never got to know his name. He was a middle aged man, covered completely in a black fur coat. It was obvious he had been outside for some time the man had icicles dangling from every part of his body. He was visibly shaking most likely from the cold. I was no expert, but judging from the purplish blue color of his hands, they were already frozen solid. Wrapped around his arm was a leather satchel that hid something. I had my staff take care of him, even called the local hospital, but by the time we loaded him onto a plane bound for England, I had heard he had passed away.

The event caused a sensation in England, I don't think anyone remembered the last time we saw a Russian! The Times was quick to jump on the story, even going as far as to call him the 'runner', for it was quite obvious the man had to go through hell and back just to arrive at Estonia, we don't even know where he was from. Other newspapers caught on too, but that wasn't the most surprising thing about the incident. It was what we found in his satchel. The papers loved it, thought it was some damned April Fools joke.

**What did you find?**

See for yourself.

**[He hands me the newspaper clipping folded up in his pocket, showing a picture of four eyed skull]**

****[As early as 1938, Airplane observers flying over Russian territory have noticed a marked decline in the flow of traffic within Russian borders. It was as though travel between cities in Russia had ceased completely. The lack of activity was followed soon by reports of deserted Russian towns along the Estonian border. The houses in each town were covered with boards, barricades and religious icons, no bodies were found, nor was there evidence of violence. This led to Allied command initially suspecting the involvement of biological weapons.]****


	7. Project: Manhattan

**West Point, New York, USA**

**[Today is a historic day in the history of espionage, the inauguration of the Alliance OSSI, Office of Strategic Services and Intelligence, the formal integration of all the former intelligence agencies of America and Europe, including the CIA and M16. It is an official agreement made by the UN states to share any and all available intelligence files in their possession in order to give Allied strategic a consolidated source of information to work on when devising strategies against the Chimera. One of its founders and architects, Captain Bruce Lockhart of the U.S 7th Army, conducts the interview during one of his few coffee breaks in his fifteen hour workday.]**

One of the main criticisms about our profession these days was that we blew it when it came to the whole Chimera mess. I mean, what do you expect? We're the CIA for Christ's sake! We were supposed to be the ones who had eyes and ears in every government, company, and cave on the planet earth. That is not true. We're an organization like any other army or company, with finite resources and assets. I'm not trying to make any excuses, there were warning signs for sure, warnings that we clearly did not spend enough time on, but the main concern our superiors had at that time was the Japanese Empire, and that was who we focused on, that, and the new weapons program we were working on.

**Weapons Program?**

It's declassified now, but in late thirties, the United States was working with the UED (United European Defense Agency) in engineering the Luxembourg Military Defense Conference. The conference you see, was supposed to be a forum for our generals and scientists to get together and share their ideas and plan projects. It was the world's first attempt at a semi-permanent alliance command. A load of weapons emerged from that conference, such as the German Tiger Tank, and the RPG launchers for standard infantry for instance. It was the highpoint of European cooperation, for the first time, British naval planners worked with German submarine designers. German Panzer commanders were able to attain feedback from French and British commanders in turn. It was a new spirit of cooperation designed to avoid another tragedy like the Great War.

Our part in the conference of course, was to pull the double blind. America was mostly an observer and we were hesitant to share our deepest military secrets with the Europeans, history and all that jazz. What we did do, was participate in the infantry arms department of the organization, allowing us to sneak a few agents in. Both as spies and counter-spies.

The MDC gave us a great opportunity at recruiting some of Europe's best scientists, even as early as '39 we had several of them working on the project. Codename: Manhattan. You know it today as the atomic bomb.

**So it was your job to keep it a secret from the world.**

In a nutshell, yes, it was a great success! I can only imagine the number of shorts we browned across the globe when the news of our first successful test in Alaska broke out to Europe. It was a great day for the isolationists, to show that our isolationism, in the president's words, "was not from cowardice, but restraint."

Needless to say, it was pretty much the last time we were invited by the UED to any weapons conference or anything for that matter! **[He chuckles]**Communications and contact with Europe declined significantly afterwards. The Isolationists had won.

**Even then though, did you hear any references to a possible crisis in Russia?**

Of course. Even if the Ivans shut the front door in Europe, there are literally hundreds of other ways into the country. They couldn't build a Red Curtain covering Central Asia or their border with China. There was some information we managed to dig up, scattered reports of missing persons across the borders, that radioactive sample of water that was brought back to America from the Volga, some newspaper report on a 'fake' skull that they smuggled from Russia. Those incidents were scattered and too far removed from another for us to effectively draw any conclusions, only that something was happening in Russia.

Again, our civilian superiors had no interest in Russia, as far as we were concerned, Russia was another isolationist country like us, why bother with a weak and corrupt monarchy like them when a resurgent Japan was our main worry?

**But weren't there reports of the Chimera emerging in Japanese Manchuria?**

There were, but you must understand the circumstances we were in. The Japanese code took a lot of American time and resources to break. In the 20s, our agency had financed a series of break-ins at the Japanese consulate in New York City. We took the Japanese Navy's "Red" code book, secretly photographed it and over the course of several years, had it laboriously translated by our agents and linguists. The Japanese knew that we were attempting to tap their codes, what they didn't know was that if we had done it successfully and that was our main concern. We did not want to risk them knowing, so for the moment, we could only observe.

We tested the code out at first, intercepting Japanese naval traffic reports and comparing them with our own data and scouting reports, it was a perfect match. We had hit the code.

Then later on, our operators were picking up other messages, ranging from confusing to just down right nonsensical. At that time, Japan was at war with the Chinese Warring States **(The 1930's saw the break up of China into at least half a dozen different smaller states)**, so the first reports of an unknown enemy attacking their men at night wasn't all that unusual. Guerilla warfare was a favored tactic of the Chinese, but what really differentiated these reports apart was the mention of demons and monsters in the night, massacres of whole villages, descriptions of brutality that were just too much to repeat. Another Japanese report mentioned something about cockroaches digging into a man's skin, what the hell are we supposed to make of that? There was also more talk about scattered skirmishes along the Russian border. All this did was raise a giant question mark above our heads

**Yet the agency didn't do anything about it?**

What could we have done? Mobilize our fleet and army right then and there, land in China and offer the Japanese that we'd 'deal' with their problem after telling them that we were listening to them all this time on their secret frequencies?

No, the chiefs, the higher ups, experienced men who had seen all the espionage tricks told us that this was the enemy's attempt at a deception, or a window dressing as he called it. Perhaps they were catching on to us? Perhaps it was a code within a code? That these…'monsters' were something else? Maybe the Japs wanted to convince us that these monsters were true to see if we would react, to give away our hand. So we ignored it.

Now…with the whole European War blowing up into our face, most of what we saw finally makes sense now. The missing people, the communication blackouts, all those empty cities and villages.

The scariest part though, is…even with all the other countrys' intelligence data on the Chimera, we still don't know much about what the hell they are or where they came from. They're just…there. And they're killing more of us with each passing day.


	8. First Warnings from the East

**Port Moresby, New Guinea, East Indies Defensive Front**

**[The former Dutch colonial possessions are now overflowing with refugees following the Chimeran invasion from Siberia, one result from this is the complete evacuation of the Imperial Japanese fleet from the mainland. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and even Japanese refugees are arriving daily, turning the entire coastline of the island into a wall of boats, ships or any craft that could float. Allied engineers are doing their best to cope with the shortage of food supplies, sending as many civilians as possible to Australia and the United States as time permits. Xu Jing Wei, a former peasant from Northern China, sits with me before heading off to the Malay front with his amalgamated unit of Japanese, Chinese and Korean soldiers.]**

(For clarity's sake, Western Military terms have been substituted for authentic Chinese)

The irony of the situation does not escape me. If you had told me fifteen years ago that I would be in Borneo leading a half Japanese-Korean force to defend Australia from those monsters….  
><strong><br>[He shakes his head and sighs]**

Still, I have to give them credit though, the Japanese. I was not there myself, but I've heard the horror stories during the _kamikaze_ campaign on the Home Islands…that and the Japanese civil war, it almost makes things like Nanking….**(he pauses)**Perhaps I shouldn't go too much into that, but my point is that it puts things into perspective. To many of the men, it's no longer an issue of nationality anymore, it's about survival. We all agree that with the task at hand we shouldn't distract ourselves as it is with things in the past.

It's not an easy thing though, letting go. We Chinese have a proud history, one that stretches for thousands of years before your European System. It was just as difficult for me when we first encountered the qinru.

**What was the situation in China like before the coming of the Chimera?**

The West called the twentieth century the second warring states period for China (the first beginning in 5th century B.C), there is nothing further from the truth in that statement. It is true that we were not unified as we had been under the emperors, but we all saw the need to band together against the common enemy, which at that time was Japan and Manchuria. There were of course, the Communists in the North, who were the hated enemies of the nationalist government. It was an ironic situation, we called it the 'unified' front, but it was hardly the case. In some places, the nationalist forces held the line, while in others it was the communists, both sides knew that once this was over, they would be at each other's throats. Added to this was the half a dozen or so large armies of warlords and you can understand why the Japanese did as well as they did. Our army was large, by any modern standard, but half belonged to the independent warlords. And unlike our Japanese aggressors, who enjoyed the convenience of tanks, airplanes and mechanized infantry, we made due with outdated Russian and German rifles and some heavy artillery.

I was recruited by one of the warlords of the north in the Gansu region, who 'answered' to the central nationalist government. After leaving my village, we spent the next few months learning the basics of Guerilla warfare. Knowing how to effectively conceal yourself in the trees, while at the same time protecting your most valuable equipment, your rifle, from rusting and jamming. We also learned basic infantry skills, such as preparing foxholes, machine gun nests and trenches, but we hardly expected to use them.

By that time, China was still reeling from the battle of Shanghai. We essentially poured all of our best German-trained divisions into defending the city, as a show to the Western Powers, _your_ United States, that we were willing to continue the struggle. It worked in a sense, we received more supplies from you, but we lost over twenty good divisions in the process.

Afterwards, Guerilla warfare began in earnest. It was our answer to the modern weapons of the Japanese. We practiced the concept known as 'magnetic' warfare, where we would attract surrounding Japanese forces into pre-determined choke points or staging areas where our prepared forces would strike back. It worked wonders in supporting our overall objective, to prolong the war as much as possible. The _Kuomingtang_ government knew that we would never have the technological superiority of the Japanese in this war, so we would wear them out in the long run. We certainly had more resources and men to do so, and our guerilla operations added onto that strategy.

After our training, we operated as a detached brigade. There was no 'frontline' in our area. The Japanese controlled the cities and railroads, but everything else belonged to us. We would ambush a convoy here, blow up a munitions depot there. Occasionally, we supported the regular army in their counterattacks, fighting street to street in cities and towns across the North. We also enlisted the aid of the Mongolians, who brought us Russian equipment every now and then.

**Was it through that route where you encountered the first incidents?**

Not immediately, the Mongol steppes are a vast and empty place. We did our best to avoid the country whenever possible, due to the real danger of being attacked by Japanese planes.

The first thing time we noticed something wrong was when we made our usual rounds up in Baotou, in the Nei Mongol Region was the cold. The steppes are a harsh place, but during the fall when we went up, the temperatures were near freezing, even during the daytime. This multiplied our troubles. Some of the men, who were recruited from the more humid and tropical regions of the south started suffering from frostbite. There were days when we lost a good third of our strength from disease and cold.

The countryside too, was void of life and that was the most unsettling part. We came across a deserted village one day. It was easy to find considering the trail of blood and bullets we had to follow. We knew it was a Jap detail, sent to punish the villagers for supplying us in our last campaign up Manchuko, there was even a deserted Japanese machine gun nest and tattered flag in the village centre. But right away we noticed something amiss. Why were the Japanese deployed in the centre of the village? We expected the villagers to put up a fight considering this was one of our strongholds, but it seemed like they just invited them in, or the Japanese must have been running in.

From the bullet marks on the trees, we saw that this was almost a one sided firefight. There were almost no bullet marks on the houses or fences, prime positions of cover for those defending a village. It seemed like the peasants had cooperated with the Japanese. But that didn't make sense. Why would they? and against what?

Even then, the story of the battle was difficult to tell because one vital piece of evidence was missing.

There were no bodies. The Japanese made it a point to leave any executed guerilla out in the open, as a demonstration of the price paid to those who resisted. They certainly never bothered burying them. The corpses we did find however, were the cattle. They weren't shot, but brought down by what looked like a vicious animal. Their bellies and insides were literally torn out and we saw the numerous jagged teeth marks on their bodies.

My men started getting nervous, I heard rifles click behind me, and just before I motioned the men to stop I heard it, the rustle of the leaves in the surrounding trees.

Instinctively, I crouched down, listening closely for any signs of life. My breathing slowed, another skill I picked up, even as I felt my heart racing in anticipation.

Then I heard one of my men scream.

I instantly turned, along with my platoon, and found that our comrade was being pinned to the ground by a Siberian wolf. We have heard of these fierce animals before, how they were the largest of their kind and feared throughout the Arctic regions, but we never expected to find one here. Before long, more of them burst from the trees, pouncing at my men while others were shot before they could get off the ground.

I fumbled for my rifle, removing the safety just in time to be knocked onto my back by one of them. I lifted the rifle to protect my face, and the creature's jaw bit right onto my gun as I struggled to push him off me. They are beautiful animals I hear, but this one seemed so much more feral, I saw the frenzy and bloodlust in its eyes, something akin to desperation and fear.

It was seconds later before one of my men put a bullet through its head. Others were fighting back with bayonets, even their bare hands. A few of my men were torn apart on the spot before we could save them. It was a maddening experience, we expected to fight against an enemy in the village, but not one so savage and primitive.

The battle lasted five minutes, and the bodies of a dozen wolves lay on the ground, along with four of our men. We quickly buried them and made our way back to Gansu, none of the men wanted to continue after that.

I reported our encounter in the village back to my commander, and he seemed genuinely concerned. Apparently mine was not the first report. There were others of feral and savage animals migrating to the South into China, among them were large packs of Siberian wolves. He told me I was lucky that I did not encounter a bigger pack, we had just lost two platoons to wolves in the past two days.

Not only that, but it seemed like the livestock in every village up north has been acting up, breaking down fences and running about wild eyed. All this of course, coincided with the build up of Japanese forces in our sector. Being a good soldier, my commander focused his priorities on our enemies, but I thought to myself that maybe the Japanese were having the same problems as us.

They always say that the animals are the first to know, that they possess a sixth sense about danger that we humans do not. I've heard the stories about how birds or even cats behave strangely before Earthquakes or other natural disasters, perhaps we should have known, but given the war in front of us, it was almost impossible to take notice. And now, you can see that we have paid the price for our ignorance.


	9. Escape

**Long Island Refugee Compound, New York**

**[It takes weeks to organize the many refugees into their improvised camps, but Sergei finally manages to be assigned a room in an apartment, part of the new construction effort put forth by the FHA (federal housing agency) and civilian volunteers. From his apartment window, I see the various protestors from the AAA chanting their slogans, calling for the 'illegal' refugees to leave. "America first, America Only!". They don't seem to bother Sergei much as he pours me another shot of Vodka. He also pours one for Vasily, who managed to get in touch with Sergei after our fateful encounter in Ohio. Now, we compile what is perhaps the only eyewitness account of the forgotten war.]**

It had been over a year since we last received any orders from St. Petersburg. By that time we had received the reports, heard of the skirmishes in Siberia and Yakutsk, and the vanishing villages. The epidemic had begun to hit cities as well. We had lost contact with Kiev and Tsaritsyn for months now. Only afterwards did we learn that _they _had already taken the cities. Communication with the Western part of the empire was made even more difficult by the howling snow and blizzards. It was at this point we received the Tsar's last official communiqué, an order written about a year ago telling us to mobilize.

There were several things my boys thought at that time, what were we mobilizing against? The Volga region had gone literally quiet for months now, mail had ceased to flow within the empire and the weather was cold as hell.

It was then that the general provided us with some statistics. Theoretically, with our huge population reserves, Russia would be able to call up an army of two million in the interior. By the time we gathered all the reserves around the Far East regions, we only had under 100,000 men in our command. _They _had already attacked our main source of manpower, the villages and cities. To make matters worse, communication with St. Petersburg had been lost, we had received radio broadcasts from the Central army headquarters now and then, giving us orders to counterattack, but within weeks the line became dead. Only one message looped over and over, to prepare us for the 'angry night'.

You can see with rational thinking how this was going to end. Increasingly the Tsarist army found itself in two uncomfortable positions. One, our enemy was one that actually thrived in the winter, he would never get frostbite, never freeze to death, he would seek cold because it was natural to him, like humans and water. It was astonishing, unlike our ancestors who fought Napoleon, General Winter was not on our side! Two, with the loss of so many villages and towns, the Russian army was actually in danger of being seriously _outnumbered_ for the first time ever in our history.

My commander saw the immediate danger, but he was raised to obey, and obey to the last man he would! He had us armed and ready for the march towards Yakutsk. At that point I was placed in charge of a mixed battalion of marines and infantry, my battalion had already lost eighty percent of our effectives and most of our officers, so I did not really relish the promotion.

The countryside was completely void and empty, a frozen desert that was made worse by the two feet of snow that was piling on and slowing our movements. Every now and then, men would fall out of the column, frostbitten or simply exhausted. The horses were the first to go, and the whole march resembled that of a Napoleonic retreat to me.

That march lasted about a week, before we finally arrived. Yakutsk at the time, was a city under siege. My men were stationed with other Naval marines that were posted there some time ago. I assumed command on the spot, interviewing a few marines on the whereabouts of their commander. They informed me that he was taken by _them_ several weeks ago, and that their battalion of a thousand men was now down to less than a hundred. I was lucky, they told me, I got promoted again, in command of two 'regiments'.

I spent the first day observing the lines and what was to be my command. Yakutsk was a city literally on fire, and I saw evidence of prolonged shelling and bombardment, only that the explosions seemed more irregular, with neat holes scattered in each of the buildings, it was as though someone had taken a giant shotgun canister and lobed it into town. This time was different, there _were_bodies. This was war.

My regiments had been assigned their positions, which were strong by the standards of the last war. Barbed wire trenches, along with massive artillery to support from behind the lines. We had everything, machine guns, plenty of rifle ammunition, even improvised mines and booby traps! Probing attacks were made by _them_, not strong enough to overwhelm our improvised trenches and machine guns, but enough to disable a few posts and snatch a few men into the night. The screams you would hear in the night…I suppose that is why they call it the Angry Night…  
><strong><br>[He downs another shot of vodka]**

I remember the first time I saw what 'they' looked like. I was very lucky that it was already dead at that time, otherwise I wouldn't have know what I would do. The thing was holding a rifle, unlike any I've seen before, and managed to drag itself through ten yards of barbed wire on its one good arm before one of our snipers plugged a bullet through its brain. That was the kind of naked ferocity we were fighting against. The kind that would send chills down your spine even after you've dispatched the enemy.

I did not really have time to adjust myself. My tenure at the city did not last long. By that time, the enemy had already evolved into a new threat. We called them the crawlers.

**Crawlers?**

Four legged things, most were the size of a dog, others the size of a tank. Imagine a scorpion mixed with a spider, and you'll get an idea. Hell, I'm not even sure if that's an accurate description!

Funny thing isn't it. We accepted the fact that our enemy was a brutal savage the likes we've never seen, with four eyes, sharp teeth, and the ability to rip a man in half with strength alone. It didn't tip us over the edge that these things looked nothing like a normal human being; they were at least humanoid in shape. But the new ones were more like monsters from hell, I think that their appearance had a profound psychological effect on our troops.

In any case, they started swarming our lines, trickles at first, but eventually they bursted from the tree line into the city limits, one gigantic black wave of these dog-sized insect things. Our machine guns opened up, along with the artillery and tanks inside the city. Almost at once, the entire front sector exploded into geysers of snow. Our shells were landing into the pre-determined kill zones, blowing hundreds of them into pieces literally. Rifle fire opened up at around five hundred yards but by then some of the men were already panicking. For every ten we kill in the swarm, another twenty would crawl over their dead bodies towards us. A shell crater would literally be filled by this things seconds after the explosion, there were that many! It was impossible to get them all. How could we coordinate artillery strikes against an enemy the size of a dog? And in such large numbers!

The men started to panic, our rifles are bolt-action you see. One shot, then you have to manually open and close the breech for the next bullet.

**He mimics recharging a bolt action rifle with his hands**

One bullet! At the least, one second? Against a swarm! What could we do?

The line was soon swallowed by this swarm, large parts of the trenches were overrun and street to street fighting ensued, it was during then that I commanded my men to abandon the lines. The crawlers had already reached the streets, climbing on buildings and jumping on civilians and soldiers. It was pure chaos, there was no central command, men just blindly shot anything that moved. I've had a few men put down by friendly machine gun fire simply because the gunner couldn't take anymore and shot wildly at friend and foe. The things were systematic, they left no prisoners behind, no soldier or civilian body untouched, and that inspired a blinding fear into all the survivors. I had lost so many of my boys in those trenches…..

**[He pauses]**

With the majority of Yakutsk descended into unorganized fighting, it then that I decided it was too late for anything, for the Tsar, for Russia, for our empire. The best we could do now was to save as many people as we can, even if it was too late already.

I gathered what was left of my men, perhaps less than twenty from the original three hundred I started the week off with. I told them it was our new objective now to break out, and head South towards Port Arthur, even that shit hole Vladivostok seemed like heaven compared to Yakutsk. We managed to find a truck in all that chaos and escape to the East, by that time the heavily armed brutes had attacked the city, flushing out rooms and destroying the last pockets of resistance. Four of my remaining men were shot dead defending that last truck, we had to put down a few of our wounded to. To us, we were doing them a favor.

We escaped Yakutsk, leaving the burning shelled out city behind us, ignoring all the inhuman shrieks that echoed into the night. I don't think any of us had a good night's sleep after that. I was physically exhausted myself, I had stayed up for days preparing the defenses that had been overrun in hours, now I was driving for dear life across a frozen Siberian plain for god knows how long.

**At this point Vasily speaks**

**Vasily**: It was at this point that Colonel Sergei collapsed, just as our truck ran out of gas, we had been on the run for the past few days before we finally reached Port Arthur. The other men, about ten of us from the battalion, wanted to go our separate ways. One man wanted to return to his home village back in the Urals, he wouldn't accept that fact that his family was gone. We let him go. I can easily imagine what happened to him.

**Sergei**: I suppose they had a vote or something to decide whether it was worth carrying my worthless carcass to as far as Port Arthur **[He chuckles]**Lucky me.

**Vasily:** He lost essentially, the men went their separate ways and we never saw each other again. I found an old farm cart, and some furs in a deserted village, and wheeled him the extra few miles. By that time Vladivostok was out of the question, we were heading east for days, finally stumbling upon the port of Magadan, where a destroyer and a few civilian craft were still left. It was at this point that I was glad that I took the colonel with me.

**Sergei**: I pulled rank on the yellow bastard commanding the destroyer, and ordered the evacuation of the town. There was no more central authority now, and but the captain didn't have to know did he **[He grins]**

**Vasily: **It took a few days to resupply and gather up some more stragglers from the surrounding area, but we finally had a small flotilla of three ships, we started to set sail to the East. To the only other place we could with our limited fuel. Japan.

**Sergei**: Yes, and what did those bastards do the moment we ran up the white flag? They took our weapons, and locked us up into these 'observation' camps. Everything we tried to explain, the missing people, the disappearances, they completely ignored us, as though we were crazy. We were kept as 'political' prisoners, isolated from the rest of the world for the next few years. The Japanese government couldn't get in touch with our government, hell if there still was one, so they let us rot, and with the war in China blowing up in their faces, they simply pretended that we didn't exist. I even had some photographic proof of the Chimera, and our interrogators simply dismissed it as 'Russian' Propaganda, and they destroyed most of them. They thought we were advance agents whose mission was to spread fear and confusion in their ranks.

**Vasily**: Eventually, they decided to transfer us to the Imperial outpost at Okinawa, hauling coals for the next few years. In hindsight, it was probably the kindest thing they could have done to us. With the Chimeran attack in Asia and all. Nearly ten years! That was the amount of time ahead we warned the Japanese, and what did they do? Treat us like some insane asylum inmates and had us do slave work? It wasn't that part that got us angry though, it was the fact that we couldn't understand why the Japanese would ignore the warnings. Why weren't they listening when it could have made a difference?


	10. Chimeran Weaponry and Biology

**Missoula, Montana**

**[Before the war, this city was home to the National Weather Agency, in charge of monitoring the conditions for the entire country. With the coming of the Chimera, and the global cooling that has followed, the United States military has converted this location into an Allied Installation, to document these changes and to determine whether they have anything to do with the Chimera. Nick Murdock, One of the Military Scientists attached to this facility, has just returned from his assignment in Alaska and agrees to an interview in his office]**

Viruses mutate. They branch off through natural selection and evolve continuously. Microscopically, each new strand might look almost identical to the original, but the effects on the host can be radically different. Look at the Human Herpes Virus: HH1 is genital herpes, HH3 is chickenpox.

You probably learned this in your basic high school biology, but it already is a very popular theory among the scientific community, considering the variety of Chimera the army has come into contact with. Strain A for instance, turns a human into your average Chimera grunt, and Strain B would produce some 'effed up quadruped. Each strain of virus produces a different type of Chimera. That was our theory, and even that hasn't been fully proven yet, we are still waiting on the classified information the Brit's have promised to share with us following the creation of the OSSI.  
><strong><br>[He downs another cup of coffee]**

Even if we do find out how the virus is spread, that is only the surface of the problem, the tip of the iceberg. Although there are many types of Chimera, how are they able to coordinate and communicate with each other? Talk to any military man and they can tell you what they faced: coordinated strikes and deep operational attacks into our territory by the Chimera without the use of modern communication tools like radios.

If you think about the animal kingdom, and how known species can communicate over long distances, it does sound possible. Insects use odors and pheromones to communicate over long distances, and elephants use high pitch frequency, infrasound. But even then there is always a lag time between the transmission of the message and the receiving of it. In reality, the Chimera move too much in sync for them to be communicating just through frequencies or pheromones. It's like they move together in the same time it takes for a message to move from your brain to your arm. They are that quick. It's like they understand their goals unconsciously and act like a collective, a swarm of locusts.

The most frightening part however, isn't just the virus itself, it's how the Chimera have managed to evolve so rapidly.

**Can you elaborate?**

Compared to our planet, Human beings, Homo Sapiens, are a young species, the earliest known 'modern' fossils of a human puts us at about 200,000 years old. Between you and me that is a hell of a long time. And how long did it take for us to develop technology that allowed us to fly, to sail across the seas and to communicate between continents? Probably all within the last two hundred years, and that is stretching it. So it took humanity roughly 199,800 years to develop the technology, AFTER we evolved.

The Chimera flashed through these steps, both in terms of technology and evolution. They did adapt, they had mutation, they had natural selection, but all this within the course of a few decades! Not only that, but it seems like they have managed to somehow control their own evolution, to be able to dictate what Chimera forms can be evolved and what can be discarded. It's almost like they are redesigning themselves in a sense, a sort of trial and error as you go, constantly improving on the design the more humans you infect into the system. Can you imagine that? Darwin would be turning over in his grave. It's like the Chimera threw the whole evolutionary rule book out the window. People talk about intelligent design when it came to how we came to Earth, it certainly describes how the Chimera have evolved.

And then comes the technology. You can really understand how the whole Chimera problem is straining for most of the Allied scientific community. Granted, viruses can mutate and possibly even control their own evolution, but where did they get their technology? I'm not just talking about their 'stalkers', those mechanized monstrosities that make any tank crew brown their shorts, but also the standard infantry weapons. They are decades, perhaps even centuries more advanced than anything we have now.

**So would you say our weapons are useless against them?**

On the contrary, the weapons we have are deadly. I worked on the Luxembourg MDC (military defense commission), we developed the designs for the standard LAARK Rocket Launcher and the M5A2 Carbine. They are standard use among allied infantry today and not even a Chimeran skull can survive being blasted by any of these rounds. You've heard about the Rhineland campaign? With General Manstein's famous defense of Berlin or Rommel's use of those 88 mm AA guns that tore legions of those Stalker units to shreds.

It's not that our weapons are ineffective, but just how terrifyingly efficient the Chimera have developed theirs. Weapons research usually takes decades to do, with proper funding, several years. The weapons commission and the VTOL (vertical take off and landing aircraft) project took several years, with the resources of the United States and Europe. The Chimera took the wastelands of Russia, and their crude industry, and turned it into something unrecognizable. They actually surpassed us in technology and production. I guess the standard Chimeran worker doesn't need to eat or sleep much, but aside from outproducing us, they also have remarkable weaponry.

_The Standard Chimeran Assault Rifle - Codename : 'Bullseye'_

Take the 'bullseye' for instance. The rounds it fires are almost incendiary, slower and less accurate than the M5, but it can also fire 'tags'. Once you are tagged, any other round in the gun automatically veers towards the target, like a magnet. I've seen the photos, heard the reports of dead soldiers who had been torn to pieces by bullseye fire after being tagged. It isn't pretty. This is just one example. They have weapons that defy the simplest laws of physics. There were Russian scientists that were lost to the Chimera, but I can't fathom how even they could come up with these weapons, especially the one that allowed the Chimera to harness the weather.

**The Chimera using weather as a weapon?**

The brass will tell you otherwise, but if you think about it, it makes sense. The Chimera need the cold, and what better way to spread their sphere of influence than to spread the cold? It's June and the weather information we've received from our Iceland base shows what's left of London covered in two feet of snow.

This is not a freak occurrence, the freezing pattern began in the mid 40s, with the Winter in Finland that killed several hundred people and thousands more across Europe. Deer and other animals froze to death in the forests. The winters became so harsh that the ETO actually mobilized the army to help provide the people with the necessary materials to stay warm. Even coal and canned food was rationed.

It was that bad.

**And you believe the Chimera were connected to it?**

**[he nods]**All the weather reports and observations from that time will tell you that this cold front originated from Russia. Not only that, it also screwed up the climates in the rest of the world. The reports of mass migrations of fish into the North Atlantic, and the heavy rains and floods across the States in Seattle and Louisiana.

How they managed to do it, I don't know, but we certainly know why they are doing it. Winter impedes our own armies and equipment, but not theirs. How many tank crews have we lost in Europe because their engines froze against a Stalker attack? It wasn't until the Chimera breached the Warsaw line that the ETO tried to mass produce the new engines, by then it was too late.

We had consistently increased its defensive budget and R&D efforts through the interwar years, because we truly believed the next war would be with Russia. Ironically, we were both right and wrong, in that regard.

**Did the Russians ever attempt to contact you?**

Not since they expelled all foreign diplomats from their capital. For years we've been trying to get agents into Russia, but it was extremely difficult considering anyone foreign was automatically branded and executed as a spy. A sort of pre-emptive counter spying, that completely reflects the paranoid nature of the Russian government.

We tried other techniques, such as aerial surveillance, which revealed to us the empty towns and villages across the border. That was where all the rumors of Russian biological weapons began actually. How wrong we were eh?

Another technique we tried was intercepting radio broadcasts across Russia. It was a huge country right? So we figured useful information would be transferred.

**What did you manage to find?**

A looped message, repeated over and over again, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The Europeans found the same thing, we had no clue what to make from it.  
><em><br>"Brotherhood, Strength, and Fortitude...in the face of the angry night."_

Ultimately, the signal died after being looped for two weeks. We guessed that the Chimera must have broken into the stations by that time.

**How about the Royal Government?**

We did not ever get in touch with Russian officials after the whole incident with 'the Runner'. God knows what happened to the Tsar and his family or his government for that matter. Personally, I don't care. We've got bigger problems to worry about now. Still I can't get over that fact.

We had so much time to prepare, so much we could have done. The rabid animal attacks in Asia, the cold front, the complete communications blackout with Russia should have warned us about something, but we were too caught up in our own isolationism to worry about it. We never imagined that we would be paying the price.

**He points a map on the wall **

December 5th, 1949. That was the day when they broke through the Russian Wall. When this whole nightmare started.


	11. Invasion

**New Warsaw, Iowa**

**[The American Resettlement Program, christened by the Administration to help relocate the fleeing refugees from Europe, calls for resettling the entire American Midwest and interior. Already over a dozen towns have sprung up overnight across the continent, providing thousands of jobs in construction of highways, buildings and infrastructure. The success of the program is such that plans for additional settlements are being made, as far west as California. New Warsaw itself sports a munitions factory and a tank factory, where thousands of former refugees now work to arm America for the coming Chimeran threat. Maria Kowalczyk is a recent arrival and worker in one of these factories.]**

It all began with the birds.

There were thousands of them, literally blackening up the sky. I'll never forget that day for the rest of my life. It was like something out of a dream, one moment I was on my way to work at the hospital, and the next, it was this huge black cloud over the horizon. I remember all the cars in the city coming to a halt, and almost everyone looking with amazement at the sky.

It was though mother nature was gathering itself, battening down the hatches in the face of some storm we could not yet see. I was a young girl by my parent's standards, having been born after the construction of the wall. My mother would use to frighten me at night with stories of the Russian bogeymen, how they lay hidden behind the walls and would come out at night to kidnap any naughty children. That story went through my head as I saw the swarm. To my generation you see, the Russians were a big mystery, similar to a fairy tale or an urban myth. We had no clue what they looked like or how their mannerisms were, since it's been so long since anyone ever had contact with anyone Russian. I've heard talks from police and soldiers passing by in the streets, how the Russian guards along the wall simply vanished one day, never to be seen again.

I've never been told the official history, only that we had ceased to travel east of the wall for decades now, and that no one knew what went on from the other side. It like the Russians were keeping a secret from the world and completely cutting themselves off as a result. Eventually as the years went by, we just forgot about it. For the first time in centuries, my mother told me, our people were left alone by the evil Tsar.

The swarm of birds lasted for several hours, all of them coming from the east. I noticed something was wrong, considering they were coming out of Russia, not only that, but aren't migratory patterns usually from north to south, not east to west?

In any case, the authorities just shrugged it off, animals had been going crazy in Poland for days now. There were reports of cows, pigs, even horses running about wild eyed, kicking, biting and trampling anything in their path with foamed mouths. I've seen a fair share of patients who came in to the hospitals with animal bites or broken limbs from their stampeding cattle. The police were called out to stop the rampage of livestock, it took them three days just to clear downtown of them before any semblance of normal traffic continued.

That all changed forever once the birds left, it took a few minutes before the sky became clear again, and then people started going back to their daily routine as though nothing had happened. Most got back into their cars, while the street vendors continued selling their goods.

I was exiting Warsaw grand station when I next heard a thunderous roar coming from the East, followed by some slight tremors from the ground. At that moment the citizens stopped to watch again, and we could see, clear as day, a pillar of smoke rising from where the Russian wall was, but it was not just in one location, there were multiple pillars, all of them forming a neat line in the horizon. Someone had blown up the Russian wall at every point. At this point, everyone on the street was in a commotion, talking about what exactly happened at the wall.

**Did you feel any sense of urgency? To get out of the city?**

To be honest, I did. The European governments had always warned us Poland was the first line of defense against a Russian invasion, and now we saw what looked like to be the beginnings of one in front of us.

I instinctively started running when I heard the first air raid sirens go off. People at this point started panicking, running back to their homes and clearing the streets. I saw cars screech to a halt, causing several accidents as the drivers ran out of their cars. I guess everyone figured they would be smaller targets in the upcoming airstrike. All the Tramcars also let off their passengers, and more people started running.

This lasted for a few minutes, until people started realizing that something was wrong. There were air raid sirens, but no one heard the noise of any plane engines or even saw anything in the sky. The crowd, myself included, took this time to gauge the situation, the entire city now stood mutely, staring off into the sky in anticipation of the planes, of something. We were like a bunch of idiots, staring off into the distance as if in wonderment, having no clue what was about to hit us.

We knew soon enough

The first explosions came as a shock, shells landed in the crowded downtown area and the residential neighbourhoods of the city. The Russians weren't bombing us with planes they were shelling us! Somehow. From their own border!

I did not even have time to think about how they did it, the first thing I did was run, covering my head and trying my best to avoid the explosions that followed. I saw several houses flattened by the concussions from the explosions. Debris and scraps of metal flew everywhere, decapitating this one unfortunate woman I happened to see fleeing by the cinema. The telephone exchange was hit, and I saw the huge office building just fall in on itself, into a pile of rubble and broken switchboards and control panels. I think the worst parts were the screams, from so many trapped people inside the buildings.

My family lived on the outskirts of the city to the west, so I was comforted that they were somewhat far away from this disaster, but I still had to get back to them. Firemen arrived now, trying to put out the fires on every single building in downtown. One woman, holding her baby in her arms, was crying hysterically, standing right in the middle of the street during this whole bombardment! I couldn't believe it myself. Shouldn't she be protecting her child instead of just losing it right there? Luckily a fireman grabbed her and threw her into a nearby alleyway, just as another blast killed him before he could even dive after her. Meanwhile, the air raid siren kept blaring, and I swore it was the only thing I heard even as I ran for the next few blocks to the residential area.

Luckily for me, I managed to escape the madness that was downtown, hitching a ride on the last train in the station leaving westwards. I reached my house to find my mother burying the old family heirlooms in the backyard, an odd thing to do considering the entire city was burning around us, but she insisted. My father was already packing up our belongings into the family car, while my mother argued with him on what to bring and what not to. It was pandemonium. A perfect scene to the end of the world, my neighbours, my parents arguing whether to take the car or flee on foot while Warsaw burned in the background.

It was then that we saw it in the sky. Dozens of them. I've heard my father talk about rockets before, but these things looked like nothing I've ever seen. They had a sinister red glow to them, and to me, they resembled a metallic hornet's stinger. Within minutes they all landed in downtown. My family and I dove behind the car anticipating the blast but nothing came. Instead, the rockets just dug themselves into the ground all over the city. It was a weird sight, as though dozens of church spires just popped up in the middle of downtown Warsaw.

I was too far away to see anything, but I could hear the sounds, the screams erupting from downtown and the disturbing sound a wave of locusts and insects.

Within minutes though, everything went quiet. I couldn't hear anything, no screams, no shouts, nothing except the cackling of flames from what used to be downtown Warsaw.

I didn't know how much time passed, I was still dazed from the whole day's events. The next thing I knew I was in the car, my father driving like a demon to get out of the city. We were joined by others, some running on foot and others in their own cars. But what struck me the most was the lack of people. My family expected the entire highway to be crammed full of people fleeing, which was why we considered leaving the car back at home, but instead, it was like we were driving out of a ghost city. We were done now, my father was already making plans, telling my mother that our family was to head west, every day, every hour, every second. To not waste any time. We did not even pause to see the convoys of soldiers in their trucks passing us on the highway, heading towards the broken city.

The last thing I remembered hearing before I dozed off to sleep, was this inhuman screech. It was faint at first, coming from the other side of the city, but before long, the burning downtown area was alive with sounds. Not the frenzied panic and screams of before, but with gunfire now, and something else….this inhuman scream that drowned out everything in the night…God help me, I don't think I'll ever forget that sound.

**[United European Defense (UED) reports at the time indicate that out of a city of almost 2 million, less than five thousand refugees from Warsaw had managed to make it to UED lines]**


	12. Voices from the Warsaw Front

**New York City, New York **

**[Operation "Winter Storm", that was the name given to the recently declassified UED plan for the defense of Eastern Europe against a Russian attack. The plan called for the creation of the Warsaw Line. A line of fixed fortifications, fortified bunkers, trenches, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire designed to hold the enemy in check for several months while the UED organized its new 'mechanized' divisions to counterattack the enemy pinned against the line. The line was supposed to hold for months. The Chimera overwhelmed it within forty eight hours. There were no survivors. Instead, the author has chosen various declassified communiqués between UED Headquarters and the Warsaw line in its final moments. Let this be the voice for the tens of thousands of soldiers who were forever silenced on that day.]**

* * *

><p><strong><em>First communiqué<em>**

+++December 5, 1949, 900 hrs, Riva Division, Estonia Army Group

Reconnaissance has reported massive build up of armor and infantry behind the Russian wall. Armor and formations unidentifiable. Request instructions. Civilian evacuation underway. Air supply impossible due to weather +++

* * *

><p><strong><em>Recording of radio conversation from the front with UED headquarters<em>**

5 Dec 49, 1000 hrs

[Manstein, UED headquarters, Luxembourg:] +++ Are you gentlemen present  
>[General Kosciuszko, Polish 5th Army:] +++ yes, sir.<br>[Manstein:] +++ UED has reported significant Russian buildup on all fronts.

[General Kosciuszko:] +++ Reports of Russian activity confirmed with Riva Division. Possibility of military incursion imminent.

[Manstein:] +++ Please give me a brief comment on report on [static garbled] situation

[General Kosciuszko:] +++ Case 1 – Activate 5th and 47th motorized corps, sortie [to the north] beyond Narva with the objective of flanking Russian advance. Armored vehicles require at least forty eight hours of maintenance. We are short of infantry forces and winter equipment, otherwise, the defense of the Warsaw line will be jeopardized. If this solution is chosen, all reserves will advance.

Case 2- General Advance. Loss of large amounts of material must be accepted. Precondition is arrival of sufficient supplies [provision and fuel] in order to improve readiness of troops prior to attack. German Panzer divisions would be able to facilitate this solution.

Case 3 – In view of present situation, dig in. Further defense depends on supplies and sufficient reinforcements. Supplies so far are adequate, but more will be needed for sustained operations. In case of artillery bombardment.

[Manstein:] +++ What would be the earliest date on which you could form up for solution 3 – to activate the Warsaw line

+++ Preparatory period three to four days  
>+++ How much fuel and provisions are needed?<br>+++ One and a half times normal supply rate. Current on hand, rations for 300,000 men for 3 days sustained operations….may corps participate in deliberation of Case 3. How is the situation with Group Danube [Southern Front]

[Manstein:] +++ To (1), wait for tonight's briefing. To (2), General Dumitrescu has received UED approval for activation of forty armored and infantry divisions. Warsaw line is being consolidated ….mobile armored divisions being positioned as we speak.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Diary, Private first class, APO no. 24 835 B<em>**

The Russians are shelling us constantly, and accurately. Within the first hour of their bombardment they had taken out most of our bunkers and firing positions. All that remains at this moment are our trenches and guns. The next war seems to have begun. God…let them come, anything to end this incessant bombardment. It is strange isn't it? How the wait before is more terrifying than facing the actual enemy. Most of the men in my regiment are thinking the same thing. We are confident that we shall beat them back, after all, what could the Russians do besides rush at us with sticks? Just like they did in the last war

* * *

><p><strong><em>TeleType report from front<em>  
><strong>  
>TOP SECRET – Trasmittal by officers only. 5 Dec 49, 1030 hrs.<p>

Multiple incursions detected across Russian Wall. High explosive blasts detected. Reports of Rocket attacks and shelling reported in Finland, Estonia. Lubin under attack, prepare for counteroffensive. Code: Winter Storm.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Last Entry<em>**

War Diary, 10th Polish Foot  
>December 5, 1100 hrs<p>

Attacks all along our front line following collapse of the Russian Wall…..reports of troops collapsing under battle stress and shock. The enemy is of an unknown type, not Russian. They have repeated assaulted our lines, jumping through barbed wire and minefields without the slightest hesitation and with utter disregard for their own casualties. Some of them have continued fighting, holding rifles even as their arms are shot off. Our own troops are clearly unnerved….

* * *

><p><strong><em>December 5, 1215 hrs<em>**_  
><em>  
>+++ This is the 54th Rumanian regiment. Our sector is under heavy attack from the Russian Wall. They're not Russian [static] monsters! [explosion in background]….half my men dead within first three waves…[shooting, screams]. Request retreat! Request- [static] Too many of them…..They won't stop! They won't die! [Rockets heard in background]<p>

***end transmission***

* * *

><p><strong><em>UED south Headquarters report <em>**

Dec 5, 1800 hrs.

+++ Reports of whole divisions fleeing the line in distress. Whole sections of the line have failed to report in. Assume gaps in line. Send the 4th Polish armor and 2nd Panzer into counterattack, lines of attack should be as follows. Lodz to Chelm, Tarnow to Zamosc. Enemy has broken through first line.

[General Kosciuszko, Polish front:] +++ The development of the situation on the left flank [Riva to Warsaw sector] makes it necessary to move up forces there very soon.

[General Dumitrescu, Rumanian front:] +++ Ten divisions are mobilized and ready to deliver counteroffensive. Will coordinate with proper information.

[General Kosciuszko, Polish front:] +++ Enemy has already begun bombardment of Warsaw and the lines. Heavy losses incurred. Request air support from the Southern flank and armor.

[General Dumitrescu:] No air reconnaissance possible, we must hope for an improvement of weather conditions in near future. Tanks in no condition to mount assault, wiring eaten by mice and engines frozen. Expect infantry support within twenty four hours.

[General Kosciuszko:] General Manstein has given authority for Winter Storm. Request all available armor and planes for this effort. Is it certain that once planes can take off once weather clears. Heavy snow fall is expected to continue for another day.

[General Dumitrescu:] Their start is ensured and alternative airfields are prepared. However armor is impossible. We estimate at least ninety percent are temporarily out of commission due to frozen parts.

[General Kosciuszko:] Will continue to hold off small-scale attacks and deal with local crises. Wait for Manstein.

* * *

><p><strong>December 5th, 1949<strong>

…..I wish you and the children all the best for the future. Let us hope that we shall be reunited in the other world. Don't be sad, the worst may not happen. But I feel urged to set everything in order, for god knows how long this new Great War will last. God's will be done. So never say die. I won't either, in spite of everything.

All my love and affectionate kisses to you. I shall love you unto death.

- Karl

My love and kisses to the dear children

* * *

><p><strong><em>News radio broadcast, Warsaw<em>  
><strong>  
>UED officials are now warning all citizens to stay in their homes in the event of an artillery bombardment. Polish army regiments will handle the evacuation of civilians shortly…<p>

[pause]

We've received reports of incoming rocket attacks from the East. All citizens are advised to stay in their homes. Evacuation orders will come shortly

* * *

><p><strong><em>Army Group Warsaw Radio, Dec. 5, 1949, 2300 hrs. <em>**

"Enemy broke through on a wide portion of the front line…Isolated strongholds still intact. We are trying to rally and train last available parts of supply and construction units….to set up a blocking line."

"Deep penetration east of Lubin and Bialystok….more than six kilometers wide in each case. Enemy had very heavy losses…our own losses were considerable. Resistance of troops diminishing quickly because of insufficient ammunition, extreme cold and lack of coverage against heaviest enemy fire. Snow is impeding supporting columns, request immediate assistance!"

"Enemy of unknown type. Humanoid but reptilian. No other explanation. Enemy armor is of unknown type. Appear to resemble some sort of walking tank [codenamed: stalker]. Also sightings of gargantuan troops on enemy side and rabid spider-like creatures coordinating attacks with their mechanized infantry. Complete lack of self preservation evident in their continuous attacks against fortified positions. Battle fatigue/psych cases have doubled within the last hour."

* * *

><p><strong><em>War diary, Tank regiment, 2nd Polish – Rzesow<br>_**  
>December 6, 1949. Dec 6, 1949, 0500 hrs.<p>

Gradually increasing attacks are becoming stronger every hour. Our weak troops – twenty one tanks with frozen engines, and two weak assault gun companies – are insufficient to hold the enemy back.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Rumanian Front, Radio 0900 hrs<em>  
><strong>  
>"Continuous bombardment since 4 A.M, cannot reply…since 8 A.M heavy enemy attacks along all front lines with numerous stalkers. …Army has ordered us as a last means of resistance that every soldier has to fight to the last bullet to hold his place. We must delay the enemy long enough for mechanized counter attack"<p>

* * *

><p><strong><em>Radio conversation between army group center and UED headquarters<em>  
><strong>  
>6 Dec 49, 1200 hrs<p>

[General Kosciuszko, Polish front:] +++ Contact lost with 4th corps and 10th corps. We must assume the enemy has broken through that section of the line. What is the status of the reserves? Ammunition is almost exhausted. Troops, no reserves available in terms of men, tanks, antitank and heavy weapons.

[Manstein:] +++ 2nd Panzer has mounted counter offensive. 10th Polish armor is currently en route to Warsaw.

[General Kosciuszko, Polish front:] Assistance is immediately required. Murderous attacks on all fronts. Warsaw is burning….bodies everywhere.

[Manstein:] +++ Help is on the way. What is your opinion of extracting army group center?

[General Kosciuszko:] There is no option but to try. Question – Is the envisaged withdrawal of forces from Dumitrescu's area going to take place as well?

[Manstein:] Yes, today. Counterattacks by armor will provide the rearguard. Priority is on saving men and portable equipment. How much fuel and supplies would you require?

[General Kosciuszko:] At least 1,000 cubic meters and 500 tons of food.

[Manstein:] Will do my best to provide. Good luck General.

[General Kosciuszko:] Thank you sir. And good luck to you too.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Mannerheim Line communiqué, December 6, 1949. 1400 hrs.<em>  
><strong>  
>Reports of men frozen to death have been coming in. Enemy has launched armored thrusts from St. Petersburg and the East. Army group North is instructed by Luxembourg to conduct a defensive action until civilians are evacuated.<p>

Reports of dead civilians and soldiers are coming in from all over the front.

Orders are to shoot all bodies in the head following a retreat.

* * *

><p><strong><em>December 6th, 1949. 1500 hrs. Warsaw.<em>**

Winter Storm has commenced. 10th armor has counterattacked in Warsaw. Encountering heavy resistance. Communications with all cities in Estonia and Lithuania have been lost. In morning, enemy opened fire with heavy artillery at sector held by the 20th armor division….division wiped out….no communication with higher command…currently encircled by enemy troops. In pocket are the 5th, 6th, and 15th division and remnants of the 20th.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Last transmission from 124th infantry, Warsaw. 1600 hrs.<em>  
><strong>

Reports are coming in of more [static] enemy approaching the city. They are strong [censored]. Many of them simply ripping the men apart. Half the platoon is dead, we are fighting from building to building. There's just…so many bodies. The men are literally fighting on a sea of bodies. Thousands of civilians lying on the ground, many looking like they just collapsed all at once [shooting and howling in the background] They are coming for us. We're down to our last line. I've ordered the men to get ready their grenades…..I've seen what they've done to captured soldiers….[static] tear…..[static] eat….[static] and their own.

* * *

><p>6 Dec 49, 2000 hrs<p>

[General Kosciuszko:] This is the end general. They are outside the base. Our men cannot outrun them. We will fight to the end.

* * *

><p>[Manstein:] Communication with army group center lost. Army group Danube, report<p>

[General Dumitrescu:]+++ Enemy has conducted massed attack in center of our line. Thirty divisions are pinned against the Danube, holding off attacks from the north.

[Manstein:] Assemble all possible river craft for evacuation. Preservation of the men is top priority.

[General Dumitrescu:]+++ Pleased be advised. Unless support is offered decisively within the next few hours, the situation with the weather and supplies will render the troops defenseless in the very near future. Question – what is the status on Winter Storm

[Manstein:] Winter storm counterattack has failed. Several divisions wiped out. UED forces pulling a full scale retreat west in face of the enemy. It is advised that you evacuate westwards through Yugoslavia or south into Greece. Possibility of aid is next to impossible at the current situation.

[General Dumitrescu:]+++ Will do our best. Over.

* * *

><p>TOP SECRET Army Group Center<br>GENERAL ORDER: 6 Dec 49, 1800 hrs

Warsaw line broken, scattered units making their way west. Remnants of Army group center will conduct a fighting withdrawal to Czech republic. German army will consolidate front west of Danzig corridor. UED command and the Weimar republic have authorized full mobilization of one hundred twenty five divisions. French army mobilization coming forthwith. Generals Rommel, Hoth, Guderian to report.


	13. Carriers

**Fort Campbell, Hopkinsville, Kentucky **

**[Elements of the newly formed 505th airborne assemble on parade ground in their full battle gear. Each man is stuffed with every conceivable tool and weapon he had been trained to carry. A few men tried to talk, excitement building up in the air as the colonel gave a speech about a counteroffensive, now revealed as Operation 'Morning Star'. Most of the recruits are eager, having been formed from remnants of the UED airborne that had fought in Europe. Before I hear any more in the speech, Captain Pratt, the new squadron leader for the 1st Polish Air Regiment, shakes my hand and gestures me towards the barracks for the start of the interview ]**

The fall of the Warsaw line saw all hell break loose. Chimeran units had immediately spread out in every direction, besieging and capturing cities within a flash. Rocket propelled spires began landing in every major city in Poland. The advance was so fast that they swallowed most of the country's population within hours. Several million people were trapped within pockets from Lvov to Danzig. Romania was even worse. Some brilliant tactician over there decided to withdraw the entire army southwards not westwards, all forty divisions. Not only did it leave a huge gap in central front's right flank, but the only thing south of Romania was the Danube river. With the Chimera on their backs you can see why they call it the' Bloody Danube' to this day.

As you know, the armchair generals blamed it all towards us. Telling the general public how the air force had failed to fulfill their role in the UED defense, how we had failed to properly scout and detect the massive buildup behind the Russian wall that had preceded the offensive. This is completely bull for two reasons. One, the air force cannot control the weather. I know the story you hear mostly is from the ground, about how soldiers from the central front ran out of ammunition and supplies within the two days, and how we failed to resupply them in time. But where was our side? How many men are telling stories about the dozens of pilots who risked their necks flying in near blizzard conditions to make their supply drops? We lost a lot of good pilots, no, threw away a lot of good pilots because the generals on the ground couldn't get their act together.

You can't resupply? Well that is what roads are for! Only the brass didn't bother making sure we had enough trucks to ship it. Sure, we had enough ammo stacked up in our warehouses to make any attack on the front a proverbial meat grinder but did anyone ever think that we needed more vehicles to ship it to the men firing it? Essentially, the brass told us, the air force, to take over a job that they failed to do. The air arm of the military was just born in the Great War, no massive air resupply operation of this scale had ever been attempted in the history of mankind, and they expected us to pull a miracle in two days?

Secondly, was the Chimera. This doesn't surprise you of course. Sure the Chimera lacked an air force at that time, but they didn't need one. All of our pilots learned to fear the Stalker, aside from being a walking tank with dual machine guns, it had the ability to fire accurate missiles as an anti-air measure. No one has the statistics, but these were fatal almost 100% of the time.

[_The Chimeran battle tank : Stalker - UED reports confirm that the stalker was single handedly responsible for almost all allied air casualties during the invasion. The technology that goes into the stalker is a mystery to this day.]_

The worst part was…Winter Storm. I'm certain that someone on the ground either botched up the report or lied to high command. Winter Storm was the perfect answer to the Russian army, a large body that was not organized enough for any operation aside from massive human wave attacks. It called for several battalions of paratroopers and air strikes behind enemy lines, while our tank divisions stabbed holes along the entire Russian front, encircling the Russian divisions while our infantry mopped them up. Thing is, the Chimera were not Russian, they had better weapons, even more numbers and a bloodlust that would make the devil cringe.

Ironic isn't it? Our tactics were designed to combat a disorganized enemy with huge numbers, yet numbers was what broke the counter offensive. Our armored divisions literally grinded to a halt because bodies, both human and Chimera, had choked up the roads and cities. I don't know who, but some genius in Luxembourg decided to send the paratroopers in anyway. Never mind the fact that they were supposed to be coordinated with the armor and infantry counterattack. Paratroops alone cannot hold onto territory permanently, they are there to disrupt the enemy lines so that the real attack can occupy the objective. When I think of how many men we sent into Poland even as the Warsaw line cracked, when we could have had those men in rearguard actions or the planes to evacuate personnel at least.….**[he grips his fist]**

That isn't to say the air force was completely destroyed. We pulled a few fast ones on the Chimera for sure. The Germans were a great asset to the Polish resistance, offering their Junkers and Stukas to help with our fight. They can be credited with a good chunk of our kills on that front. Not to say that the Polish Air Force didn't perform. Our squadron alone had helped disable a good hundred or so Stalkers, but they kept on coming, for every one of the enemy armor we disable, two more take its place.

Flying over Poland at that time was a haunting sight. We could tell where the cities were just by looking at the pyres of smoke. While the entire countryside was infested with Chimera. There were so many of them, that they covered the land like a black swarm. Many pilots had done straffing runs on them but they were either tagged and shot down or the Chimera just limped on as though nothing had happened. Nothing affected them! We bombed their columns, literally killed thousands of them as they bunched together to attack a choke point, but they still overwhelmed the infantry we were sent to support. We flew missions at night, and we could always tell where the Chimera were by the eerie red glow their equipment emitted, we saw the dozens of yellow flashes and small gun battles going on in the forests. How our paratroopers were desperately trying to fight their way out of the nightmare they were sent into. What struck us most was how the red lights would all slowly congregate towards the flares and gun shots, snuffing almost all of them out within hours.

I'm not saying that this was unavoidable, how our weapons and planning were inadequate to the task, no one could foresee this. But it always pains me to see that we still blindly threw our men, good men, out there even after we realized that the original plan had failed. What we achieved was to just have them consumed by the Chimera.

I doubt I'd recognize them now, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are already taking to the front lines against us, now as Chimeran soldiers. It's sort of a poetic revenge wouldn't you say?

The last thing I remember seeing over Poland before we were told to retreat, were these long lines of octopus like things all over the country. They were coming out of the cities, in lines that stretched for miles. At the time, We didn't know what they were, or what they were doing, but it was chilling. Reminded me of a long line of ants marching away from a dead corpse carrying bits of food with them if you ask me. I was right in a sense, as we learned later.

They were collecting human bodies.

_The 'Carriers', unknown in number and origin, have been spotted following a Chimera advance. With lines stretching for miles, they have been seen mostly in former population centres such as Warsaw and Riva._


	14. The Battle of Danzig

**French HQ, Quebec City, The Dominion of Canada and Great Britain**

**[The newly re-located Allied French Government was granted the city of Quebec, by the graces of the British royal family. Intended to be a gathering point for the remnants of all the formations lost in Europe as Poles, Czechs, Spaniards, Italians and Finns are reassembled into their national regiments. All around me, I see propaganda posters on the streets, painting the Chimera as some sort of ridiculed worker ant. Other's called them the  
>'Kimmies' as a joke. It is all part of a controller Government campaign to put the populace at more ease, but whatever the case, Sergeant Bruin of the French Condor Legion is not amused, the old soldier's eyes barely even register any emotion as he conducted the interview.]<br>**

How do you, as a commander, convince citizen soldiers – many of them teenagers untried in war – that they should plunge blindly into a battle they have little or no hope of winning? How can you maintain confidence in their leaders, who seem to be constantly ordering them into no win situations?

Well, that in a nutshell describes my dilemma. In _any_war, this is problematic. The Chimera just exacerbated this problem tenfold.

You probably never had anyone describe to you what it's like to go on the battlefield. It's quite extreme, as you would think. Imagine the peaceful calm before a barrage, dug into your foxhole and peering over the countryside. In that last moment of sanity, you might even think it's just like the one at your home, like your farm. You also notice thousands of guys, like yourself, next to you. Moving up for the attack, all of them young fit men in their twenties. Toughened by training, hardened to kill or be killed. Some of these may even resemble your friends at a high school track meet, or your co-workers at the local shop.

I'm exaggerating of course, most times, the soldiers are too terrified to think nostalgically of the green meadows at home. But I can sure as hell tell you one thing, they'll always think: "God I wish I was back there."

Or maybe they won't think that at all, some may even be worrying about whether they can do the job and take that objective. If they can stand the barrage and not break down and fail their buddies. Some even pray, hoping they do the job or they will never be able to look themselves in the mirror again. Mind you, all this happens before the first bullet is even fired.

The second that starts, all shit break loose. You hear your own artillery shells shrieking overhead as you move forward. The guns offering a little bit of safety against the enemy, who you are hoping are keeping their heads down. As you run, snipers are shooting at you, shrapnel explodes, people get killed. No matter what your age or your training, once you're hit, you become just another screaming body on the field.

**[He sighs, his face revealing some exhaustion]**

That was under normal wartime circumstances you understand? Back in the Great War. Now, on top of all that…add the fact that your enemy is merciless, unwilling to take prisoners and completely inhuman in every aspect; Sending these young men against the Chimera is something else. The fact that the boys even put up a fight at all makes me proud of them.

**Did the government even brief you on how to deal with fighting the Chimera**

At first, no. I learned now that the UED had instructed all the governments to keep the Public misinformed. To not provoke panic. It is understandable, what I didn't get was why they didn't tell us soldiers until AFTER we got to the front. You see, many of the men were expecting to face the Russians. You know? Dumb Ivan. What we got instead….

We were lucky though, we were the first reinforcements that were designated the rearguard, _away_from the Warsaw Line.

Our first posting was at Memel, with the German Panzers, to oversee the evacuation of refugees from the Baltic States, which all fell within 24 hours. The first thing I always remembered about that city were the piles of bodies lying in the snow, and our own tanks rolling through the streets towards the pillar of fire that was the city. Even before we fought they had already beaten us psychologically, their damned screeches and inhuman sounds. The Russians, we were told, were fighting using biological weapons, and we were already shown a dead leaper. One of those four legged spiders that were the size of an Alaskan King crab. What we didn't know, was that there were other chimera, the ones that were the size of a human being.

We were pulled out of Memel when Winter Storm got cancelled, fell flat on its ass thank god, and we had been fighting rearguard actions since then, Memel, Konigsberg, and Marienwieder, god damn Marienwieder. The men were scared, bitter and pissed off that they were sent to die here, and I understood that, and over the days I felt my authority slip as the men became more restless.

Thank god for Manstein, that's all I'll say. He took charge of the retreating UED forces when the Polish front commander was killed and pinned a defensive action at Danzig, the last swathe of German Territory in East Prussia that was left. By that time, Communication with Finland was lost, and everyone now heard Rumors of the bloody massacre of the Rumanians on the Danube, how Chimera forces had backed them up against the river and shot, clawed or ate them all. Poland was long gone, every unit that high command threw into the remnants of the Warsaw line never came back out.

In some respects, digging into Danzig was good, but we were wholly unprepared for the task.

**Why is that? Didn't the training cover defensive action?**

Yes, but there is a vital difference. We were trained to fight on the battlefield.

The word, battle_field_itself implies a rural setting, away from the claustrophobic buildings and streets of the city. Even in the great war, most of the battles took place in the open country, with trenches stretching miles wide.

I thought it was a mistake, that we should have posted a defense around the city instead of inside it, but now that I think back, I thank god for the wisdom of our commander. The field was exactly where the Chimera had launched their massive pincer attacks and encirclements, at least inside Danzig, we were closer to the port and the ships, we could escape, and we could also make good use of the buildings to plan a defense sector by sector, street by street to slow them down.

By that time, the men had a healthy fear for the Chimera. Their strength was insane. I've had a few of my friends try to knock a Chimera out with the butt of their guns, a lot of good that did. Only one of my friend's got out of it alive, and he's currently sucking his meals through a straw at New Haven.

Manstein recognized the strength of the Chimeran soldier, and had planned accordingly. We were to avoid all head on engagements with the Chimera while delaying them as much as possible. The Geneva convention was thrown out the window. We planted landmines, booby traps in the streets and buildings. We used live Chimera as bait, bayoneting them onto the ground with trip wires and explosives around them.

At this point, my squad's role was manning a machine gun in a section of the streets, the civilians were clogging the harbor now, desperately trying to get on the ships and boats. I've seen many of them push their way through the bodies, even falling into the ocean and being swallowed by the waves. Our men did our best to ignore it, focusing on the enemy in front of us, with the knowledge that every minute we held out, at least a hundred more civilians could evacuate.

We had heard rumors of the Chimeran 'Spires'. None of us had seen a spire attack. At least, no one who had been subject to one had ever lived to tell about it. For some mysterious reason they didn't bombard Danzig with them, for we would surely have been done for. They either must have been saving them up for the larger cities or we were out of range. Whatever the case, they attacked in full force with their infantry and armor.

I use the term 'infantry' very loosely, because what we saw were more than just the standard Chimeran soldier. There were also the leapers, the spider-crab freaks that would claw a man's face out, and the howlers, those damn giant dogs the size of a cow and with those damn howls we could hear miles away. Those were the tough bastards, their skins were so thick that we either had to get close for our bullets to go through or use our heavier weapons. Air reconnaissance had already warned us that there were swarms of these, at least hundreds of them heading into the city, along with tens of thousands more Chimera soldiers.

They announced their attack as always, with that damn ear splitting howl. That was when Manstein gave the order to fire. I think the entire city shook from all of our artillery and gunfire, not to mention the hundreds of key points along the outskirts that were detonated by mines. We had a very resourceful group of engineers explode a nearby gas depot, ringing the road into the city with a wall of flame. You know what the really unbelievable part was? The Chimera ran through and fought anyway! Flaming and all. I realized my previous error now, if we were out there in the field instead of inside the buildings of the city…..

Our street deployed artillery, 88 mm and howitzers opened up now, and we saw huge chunks of the sidewalks and roads blasted into the air like nothing. The Chimera's first wave was ripped to pieces, they all went to hell screaming.

By this time my machine gun crew opened up, and we heard all sorts of radio transmissions through the radio, coming from the snipers in the buildings. "3rd floor, send a fusillade of grenades to meet those bastards!" "Keep firing! Don't let up!" "Don't give those fucks the time to even raise their heads!" Morale was surging even as the battle was still unfolding. The Chimera were swarming the streets in their usual human wave attacks. We noticed though, that they adopted basic tactics the UED had applied in Poland, finding good cover and concealment, and working in squads. That didn't bother us much then, but considering the inhuman nature of these things, they worked efficiently like a human regiment.

One trick our snipers learned at this point was to not shoot at the heads of the Chimera, because usually their skulls were thick enough to survive headshots from a distance, but to shoot the yellow tubes that came out of its back. I saw a Chimera hit there once, the tube bursting into a million pieces of glass, and the thing literally started shriveling up, smoking and eventually it died screaming in agony.

The first leapers and howlers made it past the line at this point, being unconventional targets, the leapers skipped through our artillery barrage because of their small size. At least several dozen of them had crawled up on the walls of buildings like a host of spiders, attacking soldiers inside or jumping at the ones on the street. I heard several "There're all over me! HELP!" distress calls coming from the men. Riflemen at this point picked off as many of these as they could but nothing could stop them.

Our answer to them was the flamethrower. In time it became our best weapon against these small monsters. When a wave of them assaulted our position, we ceased fire and let those little bastards have it. The screams they made even as they died caused a few of my men to break down, and these ones I had to kick them back to the line, no one was getting out just yet.

By this time the regular foot soldiers had flowed into the city, and street to street, room to room fighting ensued. We thought we were prepared for the room to room, but the Chimera employed grenades that were perfect for clearing out buildings. These little spheres that would float for a second, then release sharp spikes in every possible direction. That was how we lost the residential district in only an hour, when we had a division of experienced infantry posted there.

The order to retreat was given soon, and we withdrew from the sector, just in time to see it blown to shreds as Manstein had his engineers blow up the pre-placed charges in the buildings. I don't know how many Chimera died under the rubble, but they kept coming! Our tanks were in the streets as well, dueling with the Stalker tanks and holding their own since the Stalker's mobility was confined within the streets.

"Sir! They've halted their advance!" One of the men shouted to our captain, who surveyed the whole situation. More men cheered, we realized that as long as we kept them away from the port, we've won, but the NCOs, like the officers, were uneasy. The battle lasted for two days now, a record time against the Chimera for any UED standards so far. But they clearly weren't giving up, their damn screeches echoed in the night, calling for more reinforcements. Many of the men refused to even sleep, opting to clutch their weapons at night for some measure of security.

At this point, the first men started losing focus. How many could stay on the front lines constantly fighting for over twenty hours without rest? Even the brass realized this as the Chimera suddenly overwhelmed more and more of our machine guns and barricades at a faster rate. Who knows how many snipers or machine gunners simply collapsed from exhaustion, only to be picked off by a Chimera. We may have killed like five for every man from our traps and explosives but we were still being overwhelmed. Our last line of defense was being attacked, but it was a tough one. We had ringed every building around the port with sniper teams and rifle squads. All the windows were boarded up and every street and entrance way was booby trapped with mines and barricaded. One stalker, walking its way into the plaza was knocked out within seconds when a land mine blew off its leg. We were holding them, but now the civilians were starting to get caught in the cross fire.

The huge mass of bodies at the port, seeing the fighting grow closer and closer to them, panicked like never before. Even as we repositioned ourselves we heard gunshots within the crowd, desperate mothers, fathers, parents, trying to throw their children onto what looked like the last boat, while some psychopaths starting shooting people around them. Refugees were all over the place, choking the harbour with corpses or running into our lines of fire. Some even jumped into our trenches and foxholes, hoping to ride out the attack and not knowing they were obstructing the soldier's line of retreat. Those idiots, did anyone even organize this evacuation? Where were the UED officials who promised everything was under control? Manstein promised to hold the city for them, but we realized that the civilian government didn't even take the most rudimentary steps in evacuating the refugees. There were no lines, no lists, no food, no supplies, NOTHING!

At this point, the battle was lost. My new command post was a hotel overlooking the harbour from the west side. We already saw it, the black swarms slowly coming towards the water, where tens of thousands of cramped refugees either tried to jump in the ocean and swim for a boat or just ran about like herded animals.

I don't know what went through the mind of the General Manstein, but the order to retreat was the hardest one I had to go through as a soldier. My father would always tell me that soldiers were those who fought for people who couldn't defend themselves, and now we were deserting the very people we were supposed to protect. Militarily, with cold logic, it made sense. We had to rescue the soldiers, the units that would go on to protect other cities, and it was impossible to move half the population of Danzig out of the encirclement. But it just didn't feel right.

After we received the order, we packed up our gear and headed for the panzer division's headquarters for the armored thrust out of the city. None of the men turned back to look, even as the first Chimeran soldiers entered the port and cut through the swarm of refugees. Tell any soldier what he or she remembers about fighting the chimera, and the first thing they'll tell you about…are the screams, both human and inhuman. That was what we had to listen to all night even as we fled miles away from the city.

I hope to god I never have to see that accursed city again.


	15. Missing populations

**Allied United Nations HQ, New York City**

**[History has been made today, with the formal announcement and ratification of the United Nations Charter. With about 50 member countries on the starting roster, the allies, including countries such as Mexico and Brazil, have pledged war materiel to the allied cause and to thwart the coming Chimeran threat. The formal integration of the UED command with the United States Military is still forthcoming. One of the representatives for the UED is David Corrison, the head of the disaster and relief division for the European countries.]  
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The greatest mystery in the first months of the war was not so much what the Chimera were, but where everyone went? We had all the contingency plans for disaster. The winter of '48 forced us to be on disaster footing. We had shelters fixed behind the lines, stockpiles of winter clothing, food and equipment ready to receive the refugees. The International Red Cross even went so far as to post agents along the roads as well as signs and rest stations. It was the most well thought out evacuation plan in the history of mankind.

Except no one made use of it.

The first cities to fall were in Finland and the Baltic states, when the Chimera breached the Warsaw and Mannerheim lines. As usual in war time, we expected a massive exodus of refugees to the west, and our planes even saw evidence of one. Discarded belongings, furniture, clothing on the roadsides, huge lines of trucks, cars and bicycles jammed on the streets. The one thing missing however, were the people, the bodies. Where did they go? There was evidence of people trying to escape, to get away from the cities, but it seemed like they were all halted in the middle of their attempts by something. This was the similar case through every city we encountered in Poland and Finland, a long deserted stretch of abandoned cars, belongings, trucks and other equipment lying on the roads outside the city, but all of them stopping within a few miles of the outskirts.

Warsaw, the city itself, was home to a pre-war population of 2 million people, and of the refugees that made it to our camps, the official UED census tabulated less than three thousand people that claimed to be from the city. That's about a tenth of a percentage of the population that managed to escape. Granted, the first days of the war were chaotic, but how about the rest of Poland? What happened to the population? It seemed like the whole earth just opened up and swallowed them all. The Finns were even less lucky, barely ten thousand of them had managed to escape the country at all, with the vast Siberian wastelands to the north and the frozen Baltic to the west. I cannot imagine how it must have been like to be a Finn trying to escape the Chimera, especially in the freezing climate.

Little did we know, Poland and Finland would become case studies for what would eventually happen when the Chimera moved into their next phase of their invasion in Western Europe. By then even our well prepared camps were being overrun. After that, it was no longer a question of simply supplying the refugees, we had to evacuate them, not just from a country, but from the whole continent altogether. By the time we recognized the extent of the danger however, the Chimera were already on the offensive, never halting their advance as they reached into the heartland of Germany. Even today, we could not accurately count how many people were lost in the invasion. It is very difficult to fathom what could have happened to all those millions of missing people.


	16. The Battle of Germany

**Cayenne, French Guiana**

**[The majority of the UED forces left intact have been stationed in both North America and the former European colonial possessions in South America. It is here where the remnants of the UED regiments are regrouped into new army corps, similar to the reorganization going on in Quebec. One of these famous army groups, nicknamed the 'Death's Head Division', consists mainly of German soldiers who have fought from the first battles of the war to the fall of Europe. Major Wolff of the 45th Panzer corps takes pride in the name, wearing a skull insignia on his shoulder. He is a tall, imposing man, his face darkened by months of fighting throughout the continent.]  
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Danzig was already a burning ruin when the order to withdraw was given. By the time Manstein managed to escape, about forty five percent of his forces managed to make it out of the encirclement.

To us, it seemed as though the Chimera were moving non-stop, never resting, maybe even sleeping. As the operations officer of the 45th Panzer Corps, I was responsible for overseeing the transfer of the Corps' staff from our former HQ in Silesia to Brandenburg, but nothing prepared me for this. The switchboards were jammed with calls for help and assistance. Every hour we've heard of at least another town or village falling to the Chimera, another road and escape route closed off, or another division transmitting their final message. The Chimera were changing their tactics, as if they were learning as they fought us. Observational learning on a grand scale. No longer were they just attacking en masse, but the General Staff also noted the use of probing attacks and diversionary tactics, simple squad tactics of cover and concealment. They also constantly shifted the strength along their lines to see how we would react, to see if we would attack.

The Oder-Neisse line was our next defensive line, and the disengagement and withdrawal from Poland had already begun. For the divisions immediately in front of the Chimeran advance, extraction was next to impossible. Aside from almost constant probing attacks, the men were exhausted, scared and low on supplies and ammunition. It was not my responsibility to organize the whole withdrawal, but I still remember my Oberst Von Wenck (colonel) complaining bitterly about how the frontline units were being sacrificed in order for the reserves to pull back. This was perhaps the closest thing to the truth, and with our unit being next in line to receive the Chimeran attack, to be the new _front_line, you can imagine the thoughts going through our heads. Still, we were trained well, to always obey orders from our superiors. As good soldiers, we rationalized that we did as we were told. Otherwise, there was no way we could have continued functioning together as a unit.

Our battery was posted at Frankfurt, the designated 'safe' zone for any civilian evacuees and military personnel, anything east of that was no man's land. Every bridge over the Oder was destroyed while UED planes tried to stifle the Chimera advance with their bombing runs. It was perhaps the greatest massed defensive effort in European history, several hundred thousand troops were mobilized, land mines were laid in designated 'kill zones' or predicted crossings of the enemy. Anti-tank and artillery batteries covered every inch of our shoreline. Infantry divisions were dug in their lines of trenches and foxholes, ready to absorb the Chimeran wave.

At this point, I started writing home to my family. The Government had decided to come clean with the situation after Danzig, detailing to the populace the existence of the Chimera as well as instructions on how to deal with the invasion and to remain calm. Now that I look back at it, staying in their homes played exactly to the Chimera's strategy of infecting human beings. But who could conceive a massive evacuation effort like that? There was talk in Germany of Operation 'Spring Storm', an evacuation plan to Africa or America based on a lottery draw, but that talk was only in the newspapers by the time the Chimera reached the Oder.

The civilian government was concerned about evacuating the populace to as far as the French border, even at that prospect, there were loud voices within the German parliament that this was shameful. I think the loudest voice of all was the _Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparte_ (National Socialist German Workers' Party), one of the major opposition parties of the country. They were loudly proclaiming that the war was being lost because of the incompetents in the government, and they were the only hope left to the country. As a soldier, I didn't care much about their political views, but I have to admit, being a proud military man, I had agreed with their version of _Dolchstosslegende_.

**I'm afraid I am not acquainted with that term**

It's essentially the theory that Germany was never beaten in battle in the Great War, but instead we were weakened fatally inside by an attitude of defeatism in the Populace. It was this 'stab-in-the-back' theory that many politicians exploited to get the votes of the army, and I am ashamed to say that I had subscribed to it. How else could we justify that we, the proud Germany army, had lost in our worst defeat since Napoleon? Of course, what we didn't know was that the parties used this for their own political means, blaming the Jews and other 'races' for sabotaging Germany.

Insane isn't it? Even in the midst of an enemy that killed everyone indiscriminately, we still found time to bicker with each other and get at each other's throats.

Either way, I was glad the evacuation order passed in Parliament, At least that got some civilians somewhat out of the way for the next battle. And perhaps gave them a head start towards the west.

Our defensive line was officially commanded by Manstein again, but we all knew it was to soak up the Chimeran attack for the eventual counter offensive. Behind our lines, columns of tanks and motorized infantry under Generals Rommel and Guderian were waiting for the signal. Even if this wasn't trench warfare, I still appreciated the fear of my comrades, sitting on the lines in misery day by day, awaiting the order to charge into the unknown.

The Winter that year was brutal, but despite the freezing conditions, we were lucky there was very little snow in our sector. The ground was frozen white, and that enabled our armor to move more easily. Our sector of the line was assigned to us on the map, with specific locations of infantry companies and artillery batteries so that we would not mistakenly bombard our friends. Our infantry regiment commander, _Oberst_Dufving made specific assignments and fields of fire for each infantry battalion and battery crew. The battery commanders than had to pick the best observation points and positions for their guns.

It was a good position, the best a defending German army may have ever had. No army in history had managed a successful river crossing when the enemy was literally staring down at them on the other side, not without some flanking maneuver or diversion, but this was a line that stretched for endless miles, there was no way we would be outflanked. Army engineers even constructed a road along the river to move units behind the lines of bunkers and barbed wire.

It didn't take long for the Chimera to attack, though this time they didn't announce their attack with that deafening inhuman howl. We saw squads of Chimera rushing for the river, individual units that offered smaller targets as opposed to the giant human wave attacks we saw earlier in Russia. I was observing from my post on the other side of the river, so I was unable to make out any distinct features on the creatures, but they were unnaturally bulky and fast, and even from the distance, we could tell from their glowing eyes and grey skins that they were anything but human.

At this point, our radios came alive. "Commence firing!"

The sound of the first exploding shell was nerve wracking, but eventually its effect died down when the entire line fired. To us, in an instant, the world was filled with explosions, the smell of burnt powder, trembling earth and frenzied activity. I don't know how, but the Chimera also managed to operate their own artillery in their lines, either from our captured guns or from their own, the first shots began landing in our territory. I saw an unfortunate _unteroffizier_lose his arm from a Chimera shell. Others simply died from the concussion of the blasts, without a single wound on their bodies.

From our observation posts, we saw the vast array of Chimeran units that fielded against us. The famous 'spider' tanks that had been the talk of Danzig and Warsaw. The giant wild dogs that seemed to coordinate their attacks with the infantry. Even the swarms of the spider creatures, who never seemed to be deterred by our fire even as they blew themselves up on our landmines. At this point, we realized the Chimera were holding back their best units, content on sending their expendable assets to detonate any traps or mines we had placed.

As we continued our barrage, the bombers made bombing runs on the Chimeran lines. Most of these brave men were shot down by accurate Stalker rocket fire. I cannot speak only for myself when I say that I pitied the ones who were shot down over Chimeran territory, especially the ones who had jumped off on their parachutes, floating gently, slowly to Earth and seeing those creatures get ever larger….ever closer.

I was suddenly snapped out of my daydream sequence however, when the first reports of Chimera were sighted across the bank. The squads of Chimera had braved the artillery barrage without even stopping, and the first had already swam their way across the river. The infantry came in now, firing like there was no tomorrow. Eventually, the small groups of Chimera on our shores became a larger mass, a mass which quickly overwhelmed the first line of trenches in our sector, I saw many German soldiers fighting fiercely with these creatures hand to hand before succumbing to them. Before I could even react to the situation, more shells exploded above my post, slamming into the trees and spraying shrapnel everywhere like a machine gun. I was unharmed, but the man next to me was lying on the ground and I knew he had been hit.

I shouted "Medic!", and reached for him, but he was already dead by then. At that point, the medics were rushing to the front, to join _Oberst_Dufving in the counter attack to retake our trenches.

Around us were the boom of mortars, the crack of rifles and the chatter of machine guns. Even before the Chimera could even consolidate their position, the first German storm troops counterattack. I saw as we overran the first line, an accomplishment in itself. Then from there our soldiers went berserk, there was no other way to fight the Chimera. They did not take prisoners, they did not offer surrender, and our men were now conditioning themselves to that same code. A Chimera would not show mercy to you if it had you dead to rights, and now, neither would we. The centuries long tradition of a soldier's honor was thrown away against this foe. You can understand how having such a thing taken from you would make a soldier turn mad. Surrender, the option of surrender in a hopeless situation was the only hope of survival a soldier had. To take it away was maddening. The average soldier is under enormous inhuman stress as it is, not only from the prospect of death, but from watching his friends and mentors torn to pieces on the battlefield.

The brutality continued. Chimeran-occupied foxholes were set aflame with their occupants inside it, and soldiers took out their frustrations on the Chimera in many ways, chopping off their limbs in gruesome displays of brutality, letting them bleed to death screaming on the side of the field. Others even went so far as to mutilate the corpses. It was an insane scenario, and none of us officers tried to stop it. How could we? These men had lived through the last few weeks in fear of this enemy, the one that had destroyed their homes and families. How else would we have had them fight? Not only that, but having all this fear, this anxiety on your mind as you approach this unkillable enemy, I think their behaviour was understandable. They needed an outlet for their fear and rage, and the battlefield provided them one. I can only pray that at the end of this, those men could find some measure of peace in their souls, in their own humanity.

At that point, we were holding the line, but the Chimera were far from finished, as we soon found out….


	17. Enter the Goliaths

**Cayenne, French Guiana**

**[Major Wolff continues the interview, showing me battalions of newly assembled Tigers. With the loss of the great industrial areas such as the Saar River Valley, allied forces are forced to improvise, making use of de-commissioned vehicles and cannibalizing obsolete tanks for parts. In the end, the German Armored Corps have managed to rebuild and repair several hundred Tiger and Panther tanks from their efforts, ready for the next counterattack into Europe. Whispers of Operation 'Morning Star' are heard within the base walls, leading me to believe that the envisioned operation isn't going to be exclusively American.]**

Improvisation was always one of the great skills a Tanker had to learn with time. To make use of any material on hand either on or off the battlefield, as the situation permits, to keep your machine in running order. Aside from salvaging the tanks, the Oder battle allowed us to apply our skills to a degree like never before.

**But wasn't the German army adequately supplied for the battle?**

Yes and no. We had the basic things, such as shells, along with fuel and food, but what about the parts for a gun that breaks down? Or replaceable engines for trucks and jeeps that bring those supplies to us? That's one aspect of supply a lot of arm chair generals forget. Sure we have enough bullets to fire for eternity, but they do little good stacked up in a warehouse as opposed to being delivered to us on the battlefield.

**But you mentioned the German army had plenty of everything.**

Yes, but no one fathomed how long we would have to sustain operations. At first the general staff believed we had to hold the Chimera off for a day or two, before the armor and motorized divisions would counterattack, but that certainly wasn't the case. The Chimera were supposed to bleed themselves dry, to be awed by the defense we put up. If it was any other human army I can tell you that they would have ceased operations, pulled back and reassess. That was the opening we were looking for, the weakness our Panzers would exploit.

But that was one thing the Chimera had over us. They didn't have to pull back to reassess the situation. Each Chimeran soldier seemed hardwired with the other, instinctively knowing how the battle is going and what they needed to do even as they were fighting. We saw it many times, those four eyed freaks howling to each other as though for orders, then without uttering another sound, all of them would turn in synchronization to meet a flank attack we had just launched. A standard human regiment would take longer to react to the flank attack. You would have regimental HQ order a halt to the existing attack, and orders would have to be written up and relayed to all the various parts of the regiment on how to react. That is a lag time of maybe a few minutes under good conditions. The Chimera move perfectly with each other, neither requiring radios or chains of command. Its like they all know what to do already, and that is one advantage on the tactical level we couldn't match. The other is numbers. That is what allowed them to continue their attacks without pausing or halting against our line, even as we launched flank attacks and slaughtered legions of them, they would always react appropriately and instantly, and there would always be too much to kill.

General Guderian realized this, even though many generals advocated attack, he recognized there was no way we could launch the Panzer counterattack now. Our method of war, of _blitzkrieg_Impetus and momentum, required keeping an opponent off balance, to shatter his lines of communication and chains of command. But what if the enemy never went off balance, never panicked? Not only won't, but biologically can't? There are no Chimeran NCOs, officers or generals. They all look the same, and yet, they move like they are taking orders from a higher power, they move with a singular purpose. Even if we launched our attack with our dive bombers and armored thrusts, we would have literally been stopped by the legions of fearless Chimera, that would literally fight us to a standstill until the treads of our tanks were jammed by their bodies and flesh. That was why Winter Storm failed, that is why to this day, offensive generals are having a problem coping with the Chimera.

**If you couldn't counter-attack, how did your generals plan the next step at Oder?**

There was no choice but to keep to the plan. We had spent weeks moving the armored divisions in place, reactivating them, and doing all the maintenance to ensure the tanks were properly equipped for a Winter campaign. Besides, we had to relieve the defensive line at the Oder. Some of the men, my battery included, had been fighting for days non-stop now, and combat fatigue cases were getting larger each week.

One advantage we had was in the Tiger Mark III. It was one of the most perfect tanks ever built by the UED. The Brits even respectfully called it the 'Royal Tiger'. Very heavy armor, about 150 mm thick, and long range, perfect for a defensive action. Against us, the closest thing the Chimera could put out were the Stalker spider tanks, and the Widowmakers. The Stalkers fired heavy chain guns and missiles, but against the Tiger's armor, it could barely put a dent into it.

**I'm sorry, you mentioned Widowmakers?**

Military code name for the Giant spider fucks that had eight eyes, about two stories tall, the size of a house. We don't know where they came from, but we first sighted them during the invasion of Poland. To us, they were more dangerous than the mechanical stalkers. These giant organic monsters had the ability to spit globs of corrosive acid. I've seen many men disfigured or simply melted away by their attacks, which had even been known to pierce the armor of a tiger tank. Widowmaker, the most appropriate name anyone could come up with.

_Chimeran heavy assault unit, codenamed: Widowmaker_

I cannot tell you the effect of Widowmakers on standard infantry. I've always seen, without exception, the men target the Widowmakers whenever they appear on the battlefield, ignoring all other Chimera units. Something about those monstrosities really affects the men in many ways.

To counter act the stress of battle, the General Staff had arranged several mini 'furloughs' from the line. Detaching combat battalions to safe zones far behind the lines, these camps had everything, hospitals, kitchens, sleeping quarters. I've seen my fair share of infantry that went there to smoke, drink coffee or talk uneasily about the future. This was where _Oberst_Dufving's infantry stayed after their savage fight in the foxholes. I've seen the look on their faces as they passed us by. These men were just glad to be alive for one more day after facing the Chimera, some even felt astonished to be alive at all. I was learning to know them, and I always noticed something about these men, these young boys we've sent to fight. It is that when a friend is killed, it is like some particle of life inside of them had died. You won't notice it at first, and when speaking with them, its like they are not affected. But given the days of brutality and horror, you just know that they are carrying the voices of their dead comrades with them, and perhaps they still might for the rest of their lives.

**Did this have any effect on combat performance?**

It depends, each man takes it differently, but even from what I have seen, I can proudly say that the Oder defense remains one of the most outstanding moments in the history of the German army. Everyone did their duty.

**[Before I speak, Wolff replies]**

You are probably wondering then, how was it that the proud German army had its ass handed to it by the Chimera? I can give you one reason aside from their efficiency, the fear, and the numbers. We simply weren't prepared to fight a war that complete, that totally. Humans can commit themselves to a cause, whether it is an ideology or a good cause, but there are various degrees. One cannot be totally, completely committed to a cause. We may be soldiers, but we are also fathers, sons, brothers, friends. How would you fight an enemy that was none of those? Whose sole purpose in life, whose every breath and moment was devoted to simply attacking and infecting human beings? The Chimera no longer had a home to go back to, no relatives or friends to see when the war is over. For them, their entire being is devoted to the fight. It may be small words, but the difference between those two kinds of soldiers is immense, and we weren't prepared to fight that kind of enemy. Psychologically and Physically.

Day by day, the crash of exploding shells, the quick, lethal screams of our 88s going over, the cries and groans of the wounded and the odor of burning flesh took a toll on the defenders. The men started firing wilder, rising from their slits, standing up and cursing the Chimera. It was difficult for us to even hold the wounded down, most of them being delirious with thirst and pain. Our morphine supply had run dry long ago, and water was exhausted along the whole line.

Fighting was heaviest around the city of Frankfurt, where the 1st Panzer division was forced to a standstill. We had some successful counterattacks, with the 2nd Panzer spearheading six miles into Chimera territory before being forced back, abandoning their tanks and guns. We had at least eighty tanks hold the line against a huge wave of Chimera, and we lost count of the number of enemy stalkers and widowmakers we put out of commission. Our infantry also fought back with incredible tenacity and resourcefulness. Our bazookas and guns took a heavy toll on the Chimeran infantry. Though we were short on trained manpower and ammo. Several companies were already lost, wiped out in the first few minutes of combat. We had one instance where a company of a hundred was reduced to less than twenty effectives after one tour on the front.

It was about a few days into the battle when they arrived, up till then, we've been having no problem with dealing with the enemy armor. Stalkers may have had accurate fire, but they were no match for our Tiger and Panther tanks. By then we had a whole mountain of burnt out and destroyed Stalkers on our front line. I can tell you nothing is more satisfying than watching a shell hit a stalker dead on, and seeing its body explode with the legs tossed up into the air. We had our own Panzer aces, there was Captain Michel Wittman. He built his reputation on the retreat from Warsaw, and it was never fully counted, but there were those who claimed he took out at least two hundred of those Stalkers by himself.

Still, we weren't prepared for what came next.

You can always tell the start of an attack by a Goliath. The very ground you stand on shakes like a shell has been struck near you, but you sense no explosion. It is a long dragged out rumble, that you can feel stretching for miles away. The only resemblance to a Stalker these walking tanks had was the shape. Everything else…

They towered over the entire horizon, like walking mountains. There must have been at least a hundred of them along the whole line. A Goliath is literally large enough to crush a Tiger tank by just stepping on it. The closest thing I can do to describe it is that it is a walking siege battery. Think of all the guns and artillery we had in our sector, and mount them on a walking platform several stories high, and you get a Goliath. They are the reason why we started losing cities within a day, some even within minutes.

Just as soon as they appeared, they began their barrage. Giant mortar shells started landing along our side of the river. I've seen entire companies completely destroyed by one blast. Even the Tigers and Panthers weren't spared from the hits. It was at this point that some companies started collapsing. Soldiers who had endured the horrors of the Chimera now found themselves facing a new threat, it was too much and I've seen many men throw away their rifles and just fled west.

The men in our sector fought back, igniting the area around us with their flamethrowers and laying on heavy 88mm fire onto the first Goliath. Our shells bounced right off their armor plating like little stones. Firing was more chaotic now, people were panicking all along the line, even as they launched those damned Spire missiles.

We didn't know it back then, but that was how they infected us. Each sector that had a missile landing inside of it, we heard nothing but screams, followed by silence as the Chimera quickly overran those sectors. We were lucky, little did we know, the wall of flames around our battery had saved my crew's lives, and mine.

By now, General Guderian was on the radio, telling us the next phase. The river was lost, and the Chimeran infantry and those damned Goliaths were crossing in huge numbers. Berlin, a city with a population of several million was still being evacuated, we had to buy them some more time, so our families could get to the Rhine. Every second we held them back now was a second the army needed to evacuate a civilian. It was now or never.

For the sake of our country, for the sake of our children, Guderian gave the final word:

Attack.


	18. Oder line breaks, Nazi insurrection

**Cayenne, French Guiana**

**[The last stop in my tour consisted of a visit to the barracks and to join Major Wolff on a review of the 45th corps. Despite the months of constant warfare and death, the men maintained an air of professional calm, completely opposite from what Wolff told me so far. The men greet me cordially enough, but instantly go back to work after Major Wolff introduced me to them. He shows me the relics of the base, worn down tanks, discarded uniforms and battle-torn equipment as he leads me to the exit.]**

You probably got the wrong impression from me when I said we were attacking. Guderian never meant retaking lost ground like Danzig or Warsaw. As far as we were concerned, it was impossible. Even if all our losses were suddenly replaced, and our armies were at full strength, we did not have anywhere near the amount of fuel and supplies we needed to advance more than several dozen miles.

**[Major Wolff gives me an amused look.]**

You look surprised? I bet your American Generals, your Prima Donnas…. what's his name? Patton. Talks all day about the glorious hundred mile advances of armored warfare? To tell you the truth, that is exactly the same type of warfare we had banked on to fight the Chimera. But there is a subtle difference.

One makes hundred mile advances with tanks only when you have sufficiently defeated the enemy, to entice him to retreat. This allows you to continually advance, to always beat him back before he can reorganize, so you can constantly advance. This is what you would call impetus, or momentum. When your enemy is running away in confusion, it gives you time to do your own tasks, such as drawing up plans to supply those tanks, as well as give your men breaks from the combat front. At the same time, you can augment the front line troops with fresh troops to increase the speed of your advance.

Against the Chimera, this rule never applied. Since they never fled from a battle, they never needed time to reorganize or regroup. They already knew where to attack and they would just do it, whether it was ten or ten thousand of them. We couldn't maintain long advances against them because our supply would run out. You looked surprised before when I mentioned that we were running out of shells and ammunition for the Oder defense? That is because we were firing them constantly. Minute by minute, day by day. Even during the old battles of the Great War. Artillery had to take a pause between bombardments, not only to assess the damage but to maintain the guns. After several days of constant firing nonstop, we've had guns break down from overuse. And even the most heavily industrial nation couldn't endlessly supply an army of over a million men. Supply is a finite resource, which must be husbanded and used accordingly.

I'll give you an example. Say you have an enemy that you defeat decisively with your armor, and he retreats say ten miles. During those ten miles, your men will be advancing, fighting perhaps only a few rearguard actions with the enemy units, but the enemy is barely in a state to contest you for the ground, and so your tanks cruise through those ten miles without a major battle for your armor. There may be partisans, skirmishes or counter attacks, but nothing on the scale of the decisive battle that started the whole advance.

With the Chimera, we end up contesting every hill and town on the way. Not only do they not retreat, but they can also summon several other similar sized formations to attack us again and again. If we beat an army decisively, and in most cases that means killing them all, then we'll encounter another similar sized army the next mile or two, and another major battle starts. If we manage to beat that, we encounter another after advancing another mile. All the while, our men will have had no breathing space to rest, our tanks wouldn't have time to be repaired or maintained, and most importantly, we use up a lot more shells and bullets just to advance those few miles compared to a swifter advance across the country against a retreating enemy. Normally an enemy that doesn't retreat would be ideal since we could encircle them, but not only does encirclement do nothing against the Chimera (They would always fight to the death, never surrendering), they had the ability to summon up limitless legions of troops to put a stall to any offensive.

So as you can see, it was impossible for us to counterattack, at least, not without more preparations. The entire line was thrown together in less than a week! Considering how we did so far, we exceeded our own expectations. No, this attack was to retake the Oder line. Because no matter how many rules of war the Chimera can break, whether it's regarding logistics, numbers or morale, they cannot break this basic rule. It is harder to attack over a river than over land. The Oder was our last natural defense before Berlin, and we were going to take it back!

As operations officer, I was assigned to review reports and issue orders from our general to the division before the attack. What I also managed to see, were the reports of the other UED forces. Apparently they were not doing as well as we were. With the fall of Romania, the Chimera spilled out in all directions like wildfire, unstoppable. They had already crossed the borders into Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria and the Czech republic, taking countless armies, towns and villages in their wake. It wouldn't be long before they would appear on our Southern flank of the Oder, since the Czech forces were under heavy attack. It was an odd sensation, reading all these dispatches coming in from the rest of Europe, even amidst the shells and explosions of the fight in front of me. It was as though for one moment, the sounds of the shelling had stopped, and in the quiet tranquility of my mind everything was becoming crystal clear. In that one moment I could see everything that was happening across the continent, and everything that is going to happen, the mountains of dead bodies, the missing refugees, the senseless battles and those monsters consuming it all. It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me. And I realised that not only was I playing a part of it, I was also trapped by it. Entranced by it….

_Oberst_Von Wenck quickly snapped me out of my daydream. The first Panzers and aircraft had already launched the counterattack, blowing dozens of Stalkers to pieces. Our division was advancing, carving a path through the legions of Chimera that had crossed the river.

"Focus all fire on these coordinates!" I heard another general yell through the wireless with great anxiety and nervousness. "MEDIC!" Another voice screamed through the radio, along with the screams of half a dozen or more men.

Taking out my own binoculars I scoped the ground ahead of us. Through the dust and explosions, I saw it all. The dead Chimeran and German soldiers scattered through the field like a thick carpet. All of them victims of bombs, bullets, shells and mortars. Those Howlers, the giant cattle-sized attack dogs of the Chimera lay dead on the ground, their bloating carcasses laying on the field with their legs pointing upward. Another German soldier with a flamethrower torched a squad of Chimera that tried to rush him, their ear splitting screams lost in the explosions and shooting. Even from this distance, I could smell it, the smell of rotting flesh, of fuel and flames, burnt powder and smoke. The perfect hell.

Our heavy artillery fired now, focusing all our efforts on the Goliath in our sector. It was advancing rather slowly, but was like a slow unstoppable tide. I saw a Tiger crew attempt to shoot out its legs, only to become crushed under the massive foot of that mechanical monstrosity. Within seconds, a steel rain of heavy shells bombarded the creature from the heavens. With each blast the goliath seemed to cringe and studder its legs and body like it was being forced onto the ground. All the tigers and panthers in our vicinity took aim at the behemoth, letting loose dozens of armor piercing rounds into the creatures hide, until finally, with a large groan, the machine started giving way. Shells began hitting the joints of the walking tank, which artillery observers pinned as being the weak point of the monstrosity. Within a few more minutes of bombardment, the first of the Goliaths came crashing down onto the ground, while others simply exploded when our shells ignited their mortar payloads.

The men cheered at the sight, and morale picked up instantly. From our base, we advanced onto Frankfurt, observing that every town between Berlin and the Oder had been virtually destroyed. Burned-out tanks and stalkers littered the road, and each street exiting a town was clogged with abandoned vehicles and the bodies of unfortunate refugees. As predicted, our breakthrough was slow and sluggish, with the enemy contesting every inch of our advance. But we slowly made our way.

More fresh units were coming up from Berlin, and my battery was told to bivouack by a shelled out farmhouse and await further orders. While columns of Panzer and Motorized infantry made their way through the roads. It was the first break my men had since the battle started a week ago, and many of them collapsed right there. Many of them were just happy to be alive. In the first week of fighting, the German army had lost almost 40% of its effectives. We were down to perhaps seventy divisions holding the line, while the Chimera had numbers estimated at over two hundred spread across the entire western front. Those numbers alone were insane!

A few days of hard fighting finally saw us at the Oder again, where we saw all the shelled-out bunkers and destroyed tanks. What really chilled us however, were the lack of bodies. At least half a million Germans fell on these shores, more so following the Spire attack, and now after an absence of only a few days, they were almost all gone! The men immediately took out their frustrations on the dead Chimera, or any still living within our sector. General Guderian had called a halt to the advance and ordered us to set up defensive positions yet again. But even he saw that the end of our endurance was near.

The next day brought new enemy attacks. The Chimera threw more and more of their units into the fray, including Goliaths and Stalkers. The 185th Parachute division on our left flank destroyed more than forty Stalkers in battle, and still they kept coming, constantly making deeper incursions in our front. A battle of attrition was starting and we were destined to lose. Already the line was starting to thin as we began to lose contact with our neighboring divisions; only through the greatest of difficulties did we maintain the front. One set of hills dominated our position by the river, and we saw much fighting in that area. The area changed hands several times, especially at a little unnamed village along the river. A few stalkers broke through the line first, followed by several waves of Chimera infantry. The German commander than threw his reserves into the village, driving the Chimera out. But the Chimera reinforcements came and retook the village again. This seesawing back and forth continued for some time, and with each time, German and Chimera soldiers were dying in agony. This was the situation all throughout the front.

Our defense persisted, even as we started getting outnumbered in some areas more than five to one. And our divisions were getting decimated. Every day we suffered more and more losses – losses we couldn't replace as fast as the Chimera – until finally the Chimera broke through. We were still holding the center, but the Chimera were streaming through on both our flanks. They could have surrounded us, but for some reason we don't know why, they did not. They were going straight for the prize, sensing perhaps, the millions of civilians still trapped behind our lines, in Berlin itself.

By this time our counterattack, the whole battle at Oder was over. Over the course of just a few weeks, we managed to stem the Chimeran advance, long enough to see most of our million man army destroyed. Now it was no longer a matter of preserving the army, we had to retreat and save as many of the civilians as we could. And that meant turning the city of Berlin itself into an urban killing ground.

Before we left, _Oberst_Von Wenck gave me a shocking piece of news.

The German government was preparing to flee to Luxembourg to organize the evacuation, all of Parliament's political parties, but they were all in custody now, under the name of one party.

We didn't know how long they were planning their coup, but it was obvious that they had been waiting for some crisis to act. Filling the army and government with their informants and cronies, The Chimeran invasion was the perfect pretext for them, who claimed the weak willed Weimars didn't have the stuff to protect the fatherland. Already there was a coup within the military, with units declaring themselves for or against the new government. To me, this was most astonishing of all. To choose this time, when men, women, and children were dying in droves, to seize power in the name of their leader.

I will forever curse that man and his cronies. Those damned Nazis. I will never forgive them for what they did after that.

**[Major Wolff takes out a cigarette, lights it, and proceeds to show me the door. Before I could even utter a single word of thanks or a question. The old soldier turned around and was already marching back into the darkness of his base. Casualty estimates in one of the bloodiest battles of the Chimeran invasion remain unclear. Even today, The Oder action is considered one of the best performances done by Allied forces against the Chimera, and is studied by generals from all branches of the allied forces.]**


	19. Siege of Berlin

**Buenos Aires, Federation of Argentina**

**[South America's largest city, thanks to an influx of German and other European refugees, is bustling with activity. The latest results in the election show the socialist reform party leading by a landslide. With both United Nations and Argentinian soldiers presiding over the election, the air is thick with both tension and excitement. I meet Otto Von Reich at a street side café. Though he is only twenty years old, the strains and wounds on his face show a man aged beyond his years.]**

With the assumption of power by the National Socialist Worker's Party, Germany essentially fell into chaos. Not only because of the Chimeran advance, but also because the Nazis, as you call them, essentially cut off the head of the former German leadership. Most of them were liquidated in Berlin, many of their prominent supporters merely 'disappeared'. Not only that, but the Nazis sought to counteract every order to evacuate, calling the army to halt its tactical fighting withdrawals to the west. The Fuhrer denounced it as 'shameful and cowardly' and 'not worthy of the German race'. Some units, mostly those with Waffen SS planted within them, obeyed this order, heading to reinforce Berlin. Others, with more stout Weimar officers in them, continued the march westwards. Because of this, the country fell into a state of civil war overnight as a series of proxy battles broke out around the country. A division would fight another for control of a choke point, while a tank division defending a bridge leading to the west may be assaulted by both German soldiers and civilians, eager to get away from the Chimera.

The Fuhrer must have planned everything in advance, as I look back on it, he had his fanatical SS units posted at every bridge crossing and road to the west, while the Loyalist forces, those immediately in front of the Chimeran advance, had to choose between getting devoured by the Chimera or shot in the back by the SS divisions. Most choose the latter route. The rest of the UED leaders meanwhile, panicked at seeing one of their allies fall away so swiftly, and there were rumors of a French planned attack on German soil to destroy the Nazis.

Of course, there was no way I would have known all of this was happening. Since I was in Berlin, and we only had the now government controlled media to pay attention to. The Fuhrer set about halting the evacuation of Berlin, reasoning that to show fear in the face of the Chimera would only serve to cause panic and a mass stampede to France.

I was one of the refugees from Danzig you see, one of those 'lucky' ones who had been evacuated to safety before the entire region fell to the invaders. What they didn't tell you was how poorly we were treated after that. Most of the medical supplies and food had fallen swiftly to the invader's advance, and more and more supplies were essentially directed to the front as the Chimeran advance got more and more intense. We were scared, pissed, tired and hungry, little surprise most of us paid attention when the National Socialists claimed the war was being run by incompetents who would retreat until there was no more Germany.

At this point, I was willing to believe anything they told me. I had spent the last few weeks with barely adequate food, sleep and clothes. I was still wearing the same flea ridden jacket I brought with me from Danzig. I don't think anyone else in my crowd thought differently, even as the party leaders threw some quips about how we were a 'superior' race, and how we must act to rid Germany of all the weak ones that were damaging our war effort. We had no business defending Poland, they shouted at us, no reason to waste good German lives defending a bunch of people who didn't deserve their own country. It was venomous, yes, but it really got our blood worked up as we helped dig the trenches and fortifications around Berlin. We would show those cowards at the front what real soldiers did.

**And that was how you started out as part of the _Volkssturm_ (People's attack force)?**

There was no reason not to really back then. We were all scared and angry at the fact that we couldn't control our situation. Participating was what got us to release most of our pent up frustrations. We not only felt like we were doing our part to defend the Fatherland, but they fed and clothed us too, I cannot tell you how many people this won over.

**But the front line units retreating from Oder, what happened to them?**

The Fuhrer granted safety to those who would join us in the defense of Berlin, and a few did, but most of them under Generals Guderian and Manstein opted to decline the Fuhrer's offer. We essentially wrote them off. They were not 'true Germans', the government told us.

**What was the Nazi government's stance on the Chimera?**

We heard the grand pronouncements of the Fuhrer everyday, sometimes we suspected it was on a voice recording, how we would 'throw the subhumans back into the depths of Asia.' And that for every German who died against them, we would 'kill a hundred more' of them. Boastful pronouncements, and the population, we…. ate it all up, happily working in sheer ignorant bliss even as the Chimera completely broke through the Oder line within the next few days.

No, they told us, the real enemies we had to focus on first were the ones that undermined the German army from the start, even as early as the Great war, then we can start fighting as a united front against the monsters. They did it slowly at first, little by little so we wouldn't notice. But certain people would be plucked out of their work areas, and they would simply disappear. Political dissidents, handicapped personnel, and other 'traitors'. We didn't find out what happened till after, how they were all sent _Eastwards_, exiled out of the city to meet their fates. The Fuhrer essentially planned to have several 'fortress' cities set up in the East, filled with these refugees. His reasoning was that for each hour these strongholds held out, we would have more time to prepare the defenses of Berlin and the rest of Germany. What he neglected to mention was that these 'strongholds' barely had enough weapons, fuel and food to last a week on itself, let alone under constant attack by the Chimera. No, I think we realize now what his true goal was.

**Didn't anyone protest or even question what was happening?**

Who had time to? When we were all scheduled to work fifteen hours stretches digging trenches and constructing barricades. Besides, we were told that the Fuhrer was doing all he could to rescue the German nation from destruction. We choose to believe him…

**[Otto pauses for a moment, as if he were in deep contemplation. Then he continues]**

We were assigned streets to defend. By this time the Chimera had already attacked our first units on the Eastern villages close to the city.

The first cracks in our Fuhrer's judgment were starting to appear at this point. We spent the better part of a week digging trenches and foxholes around the city on his orders, but what happens after we finish? We find that we've dug too much, and that we don't have enough troops at all to fill all of them! Then again, the Fuhrer never paraded the army in front of us, or more accurately, the part of the army he controlled. There were literally miles of empty trenches and foxholes around the city limits! Our defensive line was nothing more than a line on a map.

The first firefights started breaking out. Not between us and the Chimera, but between the SS divisions and the fleeing UED and German troops! At this point, even the most ardent supporters of the current regime started questioning the wisdom of shooting our own people when the real invader lay at our doorstep. It didn't take a military genius to figure out which was the bigger threat, but to us, it seemed like the Fuhrer was more concerned with taking revenge on his past rivals than focusing on his current enemy. The first of my group began deserting, civilian conscripts leaving their posts and following the UED units as they fled west.

**Didn't you feel the urge to go with them?**

To be honest, I did. But what can I say? I was a different person back then. _Let the cowards run_ I scoffed at their lack of will. Hated them for it. If these _men_had declared for the UED I wouldn't have mind, they would at least have been honest to themselves. No the way I saw it, they deserted twice. Once to their former command, and now to their own conscience. It was every good German's duty to defend their fatherland to the death. Honest to god, I truly believed that.

The Fuhrer gave us one last speech even as the last of the German tanks started fleeing into the city, followed closely by a large black mass we saw stretching to the horizon.

"Not one step back! Proud men of the German army! We shall throw back no matter his numbers! Let us not be afraid of the subhuman, for he is nothing more than a wild animal! He attacks blindly, thinking his ferocity can offset his natural lack of martial prowess as a soldier, but they have picked the wrong people to attack. The German people have been champions waging war for over two millennia! So let them come! We will show them the true meaning of what it means to be a soldier! To fight and die with honor!"

We cheered at the speech, which continued on for the better part of ten minutes. At that point I forgot everything, the gloomy attitude of the veterans, the lack of troops and the unused foxholes. I literally felt my heart burst with pride as he spoke. Finally! We have a leader who would give us a great victory over the invader. Finally, Salvation had come for Germany in her hour of need!

The first shells of the Chimeran army landed straight after that, covering the city in a shroud of dust and flame. It all happened so fast, like a rude awakening, and I was snapped out of my euphoria.

Holding my _Panzerfaust_by my side, I waited next to one of our machine guns, looking at the distance as the wave of invaders grew larger and larger….

The battle for Berlin had begun in earnest.


	20. Siege of Berlin pt 2

**Buenos Aires, Federation of Argentina**

**[Otto brings me to his favourite roadside cafe, run by a German immigrant from Europe. As we speak, allied loudspeakers echo through the city, warning the civilians what to do in the event of a Chimera attack. Many have already fled inland, believing it would only be a matter of time before they invade the Americas as well.]**

If you talk to any veteran or survivor of a Chimera attack, they will tell you one of two things. One, the eerie silence that precedes it. You see nothing ahead of you, no birds, no animals or signs of human activity. It is like the front is a complete barren desert, completely devoid of life.

Next, come the screech and screams. The inhuman wails of legions of these monsters, along with the bombardment of their mortars and spires. Many of the men just bolted at the sound, while others threw themselves onto the ground, cupping their ears and screaming for it to end.

Berlin shook as hundreds of these missiles fell throughout the city, digging themselves into the ground and release tens of thousands of crawlers, as we were later told. The giant crab spider things that would attack any humans nearby, we also heard that was how they spread their disease.

It was a fearsome weapon, within minutes we had lost contact with the northern parts of the city. Our outer defenses cracked, the Chimera infantry came pouring into the streets.

That was when my station let loose with our machine gun, knocking a few Chimera down as they scrambled over the shell-cratered moonscape of human remains and cars that was Berlin. Street to street fighting took place, and it was no contest. Most of us were conscripted, civilians who had no idea how to fight like soldiers. I saw old men, boys younger than me, torn to pieces or simply devoured by the monsters. Before long, the men in my line were deserting, risking getting shot by the SS rather than face these monsters. Who wouldnt't have?

When the last machine gun belt ran out, we simply fled. One of the creatures gave a howl as they saw us, alerting his comrades, and soon we had half a dozen of them converging on our position. I aimed my Panzerfaust at the nearest Chimera, although I was supposed to save it for a stalker, I knew well enough that our position would be overrun before I could even see one.

Maybe it was also the heat of the moment, but whatever the reason, I pulled the trigger. Within seconds, the Chimera in front of me disintegrated into a mist of red blood and pus, while his friends took the brunt of the blast and got knocked backwards onto the street. I stood there, dumbstruck with amazement, and would have been killed had it not been for my commander, a good solder from the regular army who oversaw the civilian fighters. He pushed me into a trench just in time to avoid the enemy's retaliatory fire. At this point the civilian battalions were fleeing, firing one shot or emptying their machine guns before running away. It was mass panic, and it was infectious as well. A whole city fleeing before the monsters. The old soldier must have been from the great war, because while we were lying in the trench, it seemed like he had this instinct for detecting when the next gap in the enemy's shelling would happen, so that we wouldn't be hit a we jumped from foxhole to foxhole. It was in this manner that we had avoided being seriously injured as opposed to the man unfortunate people that fled into the streets.

More civilian filled the streets, all of them carry baggage or belongings to take part in an escape route that had long since been closed to them. I saw more of the creatures now, climbing on the buildings, raining down on the people and pinning them to the ground. There were the spider crab ones, I tried my best to ignore the screams even as they dug their claws and talons into theur helpless victims.

I also noticed that some of the wall-crawlers were Chimera infantry. These things were thinner than the standard Chimera infantry, but they were fast and agile, carrying guns and flying from building to building, and sniping at the soldiers running away in the crowd. We called them slipskulls, not only because of their nature, but their faces bore a frightening resemblance to human skulls. Unlike regular Chimera, who just ferociously charge at you, these ones avoid direct confrontation, hitting you in the back when you least expect it. They were ideal for street to street fighting and several of my friends had fallen victim to their bullets already.

The old soldier continued tugging at my arm, firing at the rooftops and walls above us to scatter the slipskulls away. They left us alone for the moment, most of them had easier prey to find. Along the way, we saw the bodies of dozens of civilians. Some of them on the ground without a scratch on them, others completely decapitated. At this point, it was no longer a battle, but a massacre. One that lasted the whole day.

We eventually made our way to one of the German command posts, where a squad of six soldiers had taken refuge in a pitch-dark wine cellar. It was a sinister place, made more errie by the head of a dead horse plastered like some grotesque carving over its entrance. The floor itself was awash with wine from burst vats.

"We were the only ones from our company that made it to our objective, it was one tricky fight." One exhausted rifleman managed to speak.

It was to my surprise that I found out these men were part of the UED forces Guderian had led into Berlin. The Nazi coup had been centered mostly around Berlin, with their control of the rest of the country frail. With the help of the French and British army, the loyal German forces were able to re-establish control over Berlin, if only temporarily.

They were now fighting face to face with the Chimera.

"Our orders are to evacuate any civilians we see, the uninfected ones." One of the riflemen said. "We'll wait a few more minutes for patrol to come back."

The old soldier who helped me quickly nodded, and strapped a gas mask onto my face and handed me a Mauser pistol for my own protection. By this time, the panic and screams from the streets had subsided, and most of the panicked mob had either been killed or infected, but there were still scattered groups of refugees being hunted through the streets. There were still gunfights going on out there, whether it was between the Nazi SS and the Chimera or the UED forces entering the city. The soldiers took every precaution, boarding up the wine cellar entrance while covering every possible opening, no matter how small. I crouched in the corner with the old soldier, covering my ears as the sounds of gunfire, screams (both human and inhuman) and explosions filled the air outside.

We waited for several hours in the cellar, until darkness fell, and the streets became more quiet. At that point, the UED Captain decided that the patrol was lost. We were about to move out when two more UED soldiers joined us, one Spanish soldier and a German _fedwebel_(Sergeant). They were al that was left of two combat groups sent to the Northern sector.

All ten of us proceeded to sneak away slowly in the quiet darkness of Beriln's streets. The UED captain was on the radio with his commander, who had voiced the insistence that we be out of the city before the strategic bombing commenced.

Strategic bombing, of Berlin? That was unheard of. But the UED captain confirmed it to be true, and that now General Guderian was charged with the defense of Berlin itself while Manstein and Rommel protected the northern and southern flanks. The Nazis had either been arrested or had all fled. The whereabouts of the Fuhrer was unknown, but many speculated that he fled to his underground bunker. At that point I didn't give a damn about how fiery his speech was just a day before. He never even once visited the front lines or saw the condition of his troops. For all I knew he could have been killed, but I didn't care.

Just then, we heard the sound, a distant roar of engines. Before we knew it, the bombardment had already began.

I looked up into the sky and saw a whole fleet of UED bombers. The whole pitch black sky suddenly lit up as bright as the sun, as thousands of whirling white phosphorous fragments, each no larger than a bar of soap, tumbled down onto the city. I remember the old soldier telling me that if it landed on your clothes, it would sizzle and burn its way through until it reached your skin, where it would inflict a horrible flesh wound.

I covered my ears in terror as hundreds of thousands of Chimera within the city howled in pain from this terrifying weapon. The smell of burning flesh was unbearable as every body in the street started sizzling and their clothes smoking.

Our little group made its way into the next street, firing bullets into the skulls of any unwounded body we encountered along the way. At first I thought it was a barbaric thing to do, but I learned later that we were to do this only to infected ones. God knows how they were able to tell them apart, but they most likely saved them from an even worse fate.

Suddenly, two of the men in the rear fell face flat onto the sidewalk, both with bullet holes in their heads.

"Skull!" The captain shouted, and all the men in the company quickly pointed their weapons to the roof tops. The tubes on the back of the creature glowed a brilliant yellow, and we already saw one of these skinny humanoid Chimeras perched near the window of an apartment building.

Clumsily, I took my mauser and fired, but I was not ready for the kick of the pistol, which snapped my arm back and made the shot go high. I had always romanticized firing a gun, even if clearly did not know what it felt like. Now I did, to have that arid smell of gunpowder in my face, the heat and the feel of the casing hitting my body as I shot and more.

The other riflemen fired, their shots more telling, and the creature quickly fell to the street writhing. It gave one last screech before the Captain put a pistol bullet through its head. An eerie silence settled after that, but within seconds, it was followed up with the howls and cries of dozens of more Chimera within the area, who took up the cry of its comrade.

_Now_ we moved. One of the UED solders, I didn't know who but god bless him, was shot in the knee, and could not run, so he clutched a grenade in his hand and a carbine in the other and offered to hold off as long as he could. I tried my best to block out the sound of his rifle firing and the grenade going off as we ran through the ruined remains of the residential district.

We eventually stopped at an abandoned warehouse, the rooftop was torn to pieces so the entire building was illuminated by this eerie blue moonlight that now bathed the entire city. Although fighting still occured in a three way battle between the Chimera, the UED and the remnants of the SS, they were nothing but distant gunshots and explosions to us. Little did we know, more and more of the UED pockets of resistance were being overrun, it was only a matter of hours before the entire city fell, after only one day of battle!

The UED captain was visibly nervous now, and saw that his squad was down to five men, himself included, and the old soldier and me. He went on the radio and requested a pickup via a VTOL aircraft, one of the miraculous machines I had seen so much during evacuation of Danzig.

The reason for the Captain's nervousness was quickly revealed to us. The Americans had agree to lend the UED some aid, he explained, and one of the first packages given was a bomb. Reputed to be so powerful it could destroy the city in one blast and it was to be dropped in Berlin at dawn tomorrow. I had never heard of project Manhattan before, nor even understood it. But the implications of this was amazing, baiting the enemy army into the city and nukng it while they were inside. Did General Guderian order this? Apparently it was justified as a counter-measure, to ensure the Chimera did not 'profit from capturing and using the vital resources of Berlin'. In other words, I would learn later, the millions of infected bodies within the city.

The VTOL arrived soon enough, but at that moment, a Chimera had burst into the warehouse. Whether it was following us or not, I did not know, but this one was the size of a tank, at least twenty feet tall and resembling a giant spider.

"Widowmaker!" A UED soldier cried, and started unloading his carbine at the thing. The rest of the squad followed and even the VTOL gunner let loose his heavy machine gun.

The creature writhed back at the wave of heavy machine gun fire, but quickly spat out a lethal ball of acid that dissolved the upper torso of one of the unfortunate UED soldiers.

The men were firing and stepping back to the VTOL, which hovered a foot or two above the ground. I was quickly pushed into the vehicle while another soldier threw a rocket launcher to the UED captain. Before he could even pick it up, the Widowmaker swept him with one of its legs, impaling him and throwing him like a rag doll against the Warehouse wall.

At that moment, it seemed to me that time froze. The creature was screaming at us, ready to charge the aircraft before it could ascend, we would have all been killed. But at that moment, I felt a light tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see the old soldier smiling gruffly at the monster ahead of us. I did not have to look him in the eye to know, and I saw, with complete clarity, what was going on through his mind. He clasped my hand, giving me a metallic object before setting off.

The old veteran quickly jumped out of the aircraft, shouting at us to leave before picking up the rocket launcher himself.

At that point, the aircraft crew shielded me from the blast, so I didn't see what had happened, whether the old soldier had survived or not. Before I knew it we were high up in the air, with a good aerial view of Berlin as it burned through the night, with thousands of bonfires, firefights and waves of Chimera climbing through the rooftops.

They set us down a good distance west of Berlin, where dozens of French, German and British divisions set up a camp to prepare for their next operation. I saw, with perfect clarity the next dawn, the entire skyline lighting up like a giant ball of fire, throwing up a mushroom shaped cloud over what was formerly Berlin and flattening every tree within miles.

At that moment, I glanced at the object the old soldier handed me before he left, and I forgot everything, the war, the Nazis, the Chimera, and saw that he had handed me his pocket watch, with a picture of him and his family in the locket. I think I must have broke down, even if I didn't know the real reason he gave me that object, whether it was to save it from destruction or to give me something to remember him by. But whatever the reason, I will always remember that old man.

They say war has its virtues, but I saw nothing valiant or virtuous about it. we were massacred, pure and simple.

I learned later on in the war to interpret the UED bulletins and messages. To tell how badly we lost whenever they described a battle. About How the 'brave' troops of Stockholm were holding the Chimera in the north, and how the 'courageous' siege of Sarajevo was going well for us.

For Berlin, the Government described it all in one word: _Heroic_

**[Otto finishes smoking his cigar, and with one disgusted motion, flicks it onto the street. He leaves without saying another word to me.]**


	21. Chimeran infection

**Sydney, Australia – Oceania Defensive Front**

**[With the end of the war in Europe, Australia has found itself coping with a population boom of unprecedented proportions. Aside from the million or so British refugees from Operation Avalon One, millions more refugees from Europe, China and Japan have made their way to the only continent in the Far East left untouched by the Chimera blight. Strategists had guessed that being the world's driest continent, with the largest expanse of desert, the landmass of Australia itself may prove to be an effective shield against the Chimera. However, logistical problems, such as finding ways to clothe, feed and arm the millions of refugees with the limited resources at hand prove difficult for Allied high command to handle. Already there have been food and water riots in several refugee camps, and even armed insurrection in the outposts, resulting in hundreds killed or wounded. It is in one of the country's medical facilities where I met Carlos Oliveira. A former Spanish UED medic who has found his way across the world via Operation Avalon One. He speaks to me during one of his breaks, his hands still stained with the blood of his patients.]**

Before the whole evacuation, I worked as a field medic for the UED forces in Europe. It's very different from the image civilians usually think of a doctor working safe behind his own lines in his giant hospital tent. We had none of that.

The function of a field surgical unit was to deal with those casualties too severely wounded to travel to the rear. We would often have to work in the crudest of facilities, sometimes even under heavy enemy shelling or sniper fire. If anyone ever tells you that people choosing to be medics are just cowards opting out of the infantry, or that we weren't real soldiers because we didn't have guns….. let's see how they handle complex surgeries for bullet wounds or smashed limbs in a rained out shell hole in enemy territory with little to no light.

**[He shakes his head with a wry smile]**

As a medical officer, my responsibility was to help each of the guys who were wounded, keeping their blood pressure up with fluids and quickly getting them to an advanced field dressing station or the nearest casualty clearing station by ambulance, where we could get medication into them. After the fall of Berlin, the entire UED supply system collapsed, I found my unit operating with insufficient bandages, morphine and other vital fluids. We didn't have any blood, not even good plasma.

**How did the coming of the Chimera change the situation?**

From a battlefield standpoint, it made the medical corps obsolete.

When the war first started…when _they_ poured over the Russian wall, we had no conception that we were dealing with a disease. A plague is perhaps more accurate. Biological weapons have been used before in the past, whether it's plague-ridden bodies in medieval times or mustard gas in the Great War, but it was never applied to a scale as large as the invaders, in their case, they _are]_the biological weapon. The UED defense plans called for some counter measures against biological warfare such as gas masks, but we were completely caught off guard by this new virus the Chimera employed.

We had medicine to be sure, but that was for the most common types of sickness or disease, the ones we were prepared for. We vaccinated all our troops against diseases like Typhus and we were also ready to treat bullet wounds, cuts, even shattered limbs, but nothing prepared us for the influx of infected bodies.

**They brought the infected bodies to the medical camp?**

Yes, back when we thought they could still be cured. We assumed at first that the men had suffered a sort of shell shock. You know, the ones that make people break down mentally and they start screaming on the ground for their mothers. There was also a type of shell shock where the patient just freezes, unable to move, not willing to move another step until it all just stops. Eventually the mountain of cases made us toss that theory out the window. The first patients we received were from Poland after it fell, and there was no shortage of these cases. My camp admitted at least a thousand of these men.

It was then that my colleagues and I concluded this was a form of disease.

**Were there any symptoms?**

Aside from being in a comatose state, each victim displayed similar signs of infection. For starters, there was absolutely no pain response at all. I've had a few field stretchers, brave men, come into my tent one night with an infected patient. They told me they had just ran back from the front, carrying the patient while ducking enemy sniper fire and shells until suddenly a mortar shell took off one of the patient's legs. He didn't wake up, never even uttered a word as they dragged his body back to our lines.

I inspected the man, and noticed that he was sweating profusely in every part of his body from a heavy fever and his breathing was becoming heavier as I conducted my examination. He was still alive, but it was like his mind had switched off, his pupils didn't even move as I shone a light into them.

We didn't notice any physical transformation at first, but what I learned later in the war did much to explain the symptoms. The rising fever and sweat for instance, was the result of the disease reconfiguring the victim's metabolism.

The Chimera at the beginning of the war were thought to be invincible because of their high healing rates. You shoot a Chimera in the arm and a few minutes later, he moves it like nothing happened. If you think about it, it happens to us humans on a slower scale. You cut your thumb for instance, and it may take several days to completely heal. For a Chimera, it may take as little as a few hours. A high metabolic rate allows the body to heal from injuries faster, and it accounts for the fact that the Chimera need the cold to survive, since the body produces more heat. We calculated the rate at which the Chimera can heal from a wound versus a human, we estimated that a Chimera heals at a rate twelve times faster than a normal human. It's only a theory, but we believe that on top of that, the Chimera also make use of a symbiotic bacteria to heal injuries that are too serious for their metabolic rate alone. Some sort of all purpose first aid spray in simple terms.

Anyways we've eventually had so much of these 'infected' cases piling into our camps that we moved them to a specialized hospital in our army bases, where doctors tended to them around the clock.

**Did your superiors have any suspicions about the Chimera using biological warfare**

After Poland we did. With thousands of troops suddenly falling sick to this fever, it didn't take long before UED protocols required us to wear gas masks and biohazard suits to protect us from the virus. (at that point, we didn't know whether it was airborne.)

We did of course, have conventional cases, the ones we could cure. We've had men come in with bullet wounds, stab and bite wounds. A few unfortunate souls even had limbs torn off, but they were all treatable. For the feverish infected soldiers, all we could think of doing was make them comfortable.

But one thing really puzzled us at that point. If this was a biological weapon, why didn't any of the infected soldiers die? They all just lay there in that same feverish state, but their vital signs didn't show any evidences of weakening, we never had a single fatality. On top of that, commanders were observing that the Chimera left the infected bodies alone. Whereas the uninfected bodies on the field usually had all their flesh eaten away by the Chimeran troops (**Documented sightings of wounded Chimera eating human corpses and cannibalizing each other have been made by German troops during the Oder battle**)

Eventually, we learned the reason why. After Danzig, we started moving the infected soldiers westwards to our other camps, it was at that point the first physical changes appeared on the victims' bodies. Their skin started scaling, and their eyes became this horrible yellowish color. My people called it _ el ojo de Diablo_. The Devil's eye.

I still remember the first incident we had in the hospital. I was with my superior officer, briefing him on the effects of the disease as it ran its course through patient zero.

**Patient Zero?**

The first soldier brought into my care with the infection. He was a large burly man from the 25th Polish division. We had been keeping him under observation for weeks, and noted the changes to his body. At this stage, he looked more like a humanoid lizard than a regular person. He underwent what we soon dubbed, a state of "hybridization"

I would always remember my commander's face after that incident. He stared blankly into my eyes with shock. There were no words he could express, but if I already saw it in his face. _Do you know what this means…..for us…..for the people…_

I did, and just at the moment, after his weeks long suspension, the patient came to life. He started snarling like a wild beast, latching onto one of my aides and began beating his skull out.

My superior and I tried to hold him down, but the man's strength was unbelievable. He lifted me and the major off the ground and threw us across the room! Eventually our screams brought the attention of the French guards outside, and they quickly unloaded a clip of machine gun bullets into Patient zero.

The first outbreaks started happening in the hospitals now, where patients who had been weeks under started waking up from their comas and attacking the hospital staff. I heard first hand reports of the blood bath battles in Paris, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, where the newly-turned Chimera tore the wounded and the staff into bloody pieces before police and soldiers were able to put them down. I saw first hand a room in Vienna, where the 'patients' had smashed the barricades the frightened staff tried to protect themselves behind. The room was filled with nothing but mangled bodies, chewed meat, pulped flesh and bloodied cots.

After the incidents, we took the necessary precautions with the infected bodies.

**Euthanizing them you mean?**

Only for the advanced cases, we wanted to preserve as many of them as we could in case we founded a cure. Eventually we started setting up camps in for each stage of the disease, whether it's a freshly infected body to one undergoing its final transformation. Each stage of the process would bring the patient to a different camp, eventually the ending camp, the last stage, involved either shooting them in the head or injecting enough morphine into them to stop their hearts. I say 'hearts', because the corpses of hybrids we found on the field all had two hearts in their bodies. Probably accounts for their metabolism.

After the fall of Berlin, when retrieval of wounded and infected soldiers became impossible, they started issuing us with Cyanide pills and pistols. Not for defense, but "to deny the enemy a precious resource", the bodies of our men, our comrades, our friends. I've heard of similar 'mercy killings' taking place in Austria and Yugoslavia.

It's a sickening irony. We, as doctors and medics, were now responsible for taking lives rather than saving them. You could argue we were saving them from a worse fate, but we see it differently. We've had hundreds of brave men risking their lives as stretcher bearers to save the lives of their wounded comrades, what ended up happening was that their fine work ended up being wasted.

What's even more sickening is that we kept some of them alive for 'study' and propaganda purposes. You ever saw the UK film about a group of British marines capturing a Chimera trying to 'escape' from the English army? That was a hoax. The Chimeran 'Prisoner' was a turned human, nothing more. Those things never surrendered. What's worse was that government sponsored hoax ended up endangering more people, who now thought it was possible to capture a Chimera on the field. I can't tell you how many young men died because they wanted to try and 'be heroes'.

**Did you ever find out how the infection was spread?**

It wasn't airborne to be sure, so it remains a mystery to this day. We know it has something to do with the Spire missiles. That is the vehicle of delivery, but how they infect the person remains a mystery. There has been no documented eye witness accounts of how a spire attack works. Usually, they just fire one and the entire area they target goes dead. No survivors ever emerge from a spire target area.

**Do you believe it is gas that transmits the virus?**

We thought so, but the clues on the bodies just raises more questions. For instance, you probably hear people talk about how the infected bodies are untouched. That is far from the truth, we've had some bodies brought in with scratch marks all over their bodies. Self inflicted, as though they were trying to dig something out of their skin. We never fully determined the cause of it, whether it was due to hysteria or a symptom of the disease.

**Has there ever been a case of a human immunity to the disease.**

Not that I know of. At the moment, we consider the disease to have a 100% fatality rate. Out of the tens of millions of infected people, we've yet to see one case of a human immunity. Right now our only hope now lies in a cure, and even then we've failed to isolate the virus that causes the transformation.

God knows how we're going to deal with them once they land on the mainland.


	22. Logistics of the Chimeran War

**Washington D.C, United States of America**

**[The Pentagon is in a state of frenzied activity. Code breakers and switch board operators are hard at work deciphering the latest transmissions from the Eurasian continent. The Chimeran advance through the Middle East and Africa is being monitored closely by Allied command as are the last ditch efforts of the British army in the British Isles. While that is happening, half of the Pentagon staff is furiously working on the final preparations for Operation Deliverance, formerly known as Morning Star. From what little information is revealed, it seems the last of the British resistance forces in England have discovered something of great importance, so much so that the operation's namesake has been changed. Although America has yet to enter a full state of war, the British are negotiating with the American government for just that, using whatever they had found in England as a bargaining chip. Word has it, that it is a secret weapon against the Chimera. Before I could speculate any further into the operations, General Bradley Sinclair invites me into his office for the interview. The room is messy, filled to the brim with stacks of papers and reports. He holds a glass of Cognac in his right hand, sighs of exhaustion evident in his eyes.]**

I'll be the first to admit it. We've already lost this war. Although some of the politicians and fringe groups still refuse to see it so. **(He scoffs in disgust)**

I've read the battle reports, kept track of the enemy advance through Europe down to the final transmissions of General Manstein's forces in Hamburg. Although the President wishes to believe otherwise, I personally believe that this operation will achieve nothing more than to send ten thousand good men to their deaths. To the Chimera, it may as well be ten thousand pieces of good meat we're shipping over to them.

_Operation : Deliverance_

**[He sips a bit of cognac]**

No General in history…..Not even Napoleon or Alexander, had to fight an enemy like the Chimera. There is simply no way to plan a war against them. You must have heard the reports right? How every armored advance into them just gets stopped in their tracks, how our aircraft get shot out of the sky by a single stalker or Goliath? How our wounded troops are eaten alive by the Chimera soldiers?

**[Before I could reply, General Sinclair continues] **

But of course you have! You've been bloody interviewing everyone and their mother these past few weeks haven't you sir? Well then, let me tell you why we're royally **(expletive removed by author)**. In all of history, what single factor has contributed the most to an army winning or losing? High school kids would probably say Generalship, I would agree with them on some level, but the real answer is Logistics. The ability to supply your troops and keep them fed, clothed, and armed. Logistics also refers to lines of supply, and is supported by production, the amount of bullets, bandages, shells, tanks, ships and planes you can produce. Historically speaking, Sherman had it right. A nation of farmers has never beaten a nation of mechanics. How can you hope to win against an enemy in the long run if they have the ability to clothe more men, feed more men, and arm more men, and produce more cannon and guns than you?

In terms of Civil war talk, the Chimera represent the North. They hold the major industrial regions of Europe and Russia, not to mention Asia as well! Eurasia itself is a land of unprecedented amounts of natural resources, which can be converted into the raw materials necessary for production. Why do you think the Chimera keep throwing their Stalkers at our tanks even though we kill three of those for every tank we lose? It is because the Chimera can afford it! Can you imagine? They've taken the backwards industry of Russia, and transformed it into a full working war industry in a few years. God knows what they can make now with the industrial areas in Europe such as the Ruhr and Saar valley? In essence, we've already lost the production race with the fall of Germany. Add to that, the technology of the Chimera, something far beyond what we can even comprehend, let alone combat!

Still, Logistics is one part of the scary picture. The true advantage of the Chimera lies in the fact that they operate on a total war footing. Make no mistake, this enemy fights a total war.

You've heard the term total war many times, but no country in history has ever been able to go to total war. Humans are humans. We need to eat, sleep, bathe, watch television or even object if the war goes against our conscience. It is for these reasons that total war is impossible for us.

But for the Chimera, it is a different story. The average Chimeran Menial worker has no family to go to, no television to watch, or more importantly, has no need for things such as televisions, Children's dolls or sports. They just work, work, and work. So imagine this, if every factory in America were to suddenly shut down. Food, drugs, entertainment, toy factories are all converted to tank factories. And the people just miraculously decide they don't need to bathe, eat, play or sleep. THEN maybe we stand a chance of matching the Chimera industrial production. That is on a per capita basis of course, we cannot even hope to match the amount of resources the Chimera now control in Eurasia.

But to me, the most frightening part of the Chimera is that fact that they are a virus. Viruses are frightening things, we've had the influenza outbreak years ago, and you saw the panic in the streets didn't you? There is something very unnerving about fighting an enemy that is too small to see, yet can kill you from the inside. Yet there is still some aspect of a viral outbreak we can control, such as quarantining all the infected people and healing them or letting them die off with the virus.

There's no such luck with the Chimera.

For the first time in human history, we are fighting a virus that knows how to create tanks, machine guns, and other monstrosities, in order to spread itself. We are fighting a virus that has the self awareness to _weaponize_itself. Putting it in those damn Spire missiles to infect our population centres.

In essence, we are fighting the perfect army. An army that is supported by a working class that is total devoted to war, fought by soldiers who show no fear, and spread by a disease that converts people to its cause without a fault.

Let me give you a few more examples of how this makes them a perfect army. Both logistically and in the big picture.

In our own armies. Whenever we advance to capture a position, say a city. It is a rule that the further you advance into enemy territory, the weaker your armies get. Ask Napoleon when he invaded Russia. Came in with 600,000 men, but fought the Russians with only 100,000 at Borodino. Why is that? Because he had to leave men behind to garrison the towns, and guard the roads. To protect his lines of supply and to keep the loyalty of the population in check. Well, what if you didn't need to have lines of supply? What if every major city you entered always contained enough 'food' to keep your army going, and to add recruits everytime? That's what the Chimera do. They don't need lines of supply for their troops, everything is procured on the battlefield. Whether its eating the dead bodies of our troops or their own troops!

Besides, who do they need to protect lines of supply from? Every single human being behind the Chimeran lines are either dead or infected. There is simply no way to pass yourself off as a Chimera. Because of this, the total obliteration of the population wherever they go. Chimera troops don't need to garrison the towns they pass. They can just waltz from city to city. Infecting or eating everyone, then just march to battle at full strength, or even more since they can convert our people against us! That explains how they can leapfrog over fast distances so fast. How Poland fell in virtually less than two weeks. They don't need road guards, they don't post soldiers to guard their wounded or sick, they don't need to administrate their fallen territory's populations, because the virus takes care of it all! That also gives the Chimera a boost in numbers. Whenever they take over a population centre, they can convert those people into soldiers. When Warsaw fell, it had over two million people in it. Even if we assume they killed half of the population, that still equals one million more troops for the Chimera to throw against our lines! In taking one city, the Chimera have added more troops to their army to match the size of any Great War army. Just from converting the population of _one_city!

The virus also gives another advantage to the Chimera. Efficiency. There are no conscientious objectors of the war on the Chimera side, every infected person is driven by instinct to infect others. They don't complain if they work twenty hours in the factory or if they are worked to death **(This is all speculation, no firsthand account of a Chimeran production facility has been uncovered as of yet)**. The fact that they don't need to administrate the conquered territories, the fact that they don't have a civilian population that demands products that take away from war production, the fact that the average Chimeran soldier has absolutely no need for anything at all, it all really serves to increase their overall effectiveness as a fighting force.

I'll give you an example. Do you know how many people it takes to field one soldier? I'm not only talking about the people making the bullets or the clothes. I'm talking medics, payroll administrators, psychiatric examiners and the supply truck drivers. Don't know? On average, for every soldier we field, we have at least fifteen people working behind the lines to make sure that one soldier is fit, able and fully armed to stay on the field. The Chimera have no need for things like psychiatric examiners or back pay. They're just there to fight and eat our men! I'm guessing that the number of menials required to keep one Soldier in the field is as low as two. One to make their guns, one to make their armor. And you wonder why we're outnumbered in all our battles? Heck, even if we stick every woman and child in uniform and somehow ignore realities like supply and logistics, we're _still_outnumbered! And the enemy can only get stronger in numbers the more of us they kill, that is another damning advantage they have.

We are in essence, fighting a _conscious virus_. A virus that knows our tactics and strategies, that somehow has access to technologies unheard of to us. A virus that consciously seeks to make us just like them and won't stop until all of us are howling and groaning menials. They won't surrender, they won't negotiate, they won't ever stop until that happens.

And frankly, having to plan to fight something like that scares the shit out of me.

**[General Sinclair was relieved of duty the next day. No reason was given. Officially his status is on 'awaiting further orders'. It is unknown at this time what the true numbers of the Chimera are, given the fall of Eurasia, but even skeptics agree the majority of the populations in the areas are either dead, or converted.]**


	23. Propaganda

**USS Ticonderoga, Off the Coast of Japan**

**[It has been three months since Allied forces were forced to abandon the Japanese Home Islands to the Chimera, and no one knows what awaits them on shore. All aerial surveillance of the Japanese coast revealed nothing but abandoned and barricaded villages and military bases. Not a soul was seen. From the distance, we observed the Chimeran structures that were taking root in the cities of Japan, huge twisted steel towers and facilities whose purpose still eludes us. It is the closest I have ever gotten to the Chimera. Operation Deliverance is scheduled to be underway soon, but beforehand, Allied command wants to test the waters near Chimeran shores. I managed to volunteer as a civilian communications aide for the Allied command. Security is tight on the US vessels as dozens of aircraft fly their sorties to and from the Japanese mainland. During my breaks on deck, I meet up with another communications officer, Takuya Yamazaki, formerly of the Imperial Japanese Army]**

It is a hard thing to look at your home in such a state. It is even harder to believe how the state of the world's affairs have changed. Before the Chimera, people talked of nations, ethnicities and social castes, but now all we hear is the talk of survival. The equality of suffering, as one of your talented American poets put it at.

**I hear you are part of the Alliance Broadcasting and Communications Department, can you elaborate a bit more on this?**

The ABC's (awesome abbreviation eh?) were formed after the fall of Berlin. At the time Japan hadn't joined but it started out as a civilian sponsored propaganda campaign to help unite the population against the Chimera. Before then the government really did an incompetent job of informing the people, even after the fall of Poland, many in Western Europe still believed the enemy were the Russians. Could you imagine the fear the soldiers must have felt when they realized once they got to the front the enemy were anything but Russian? Ignorance costed Europe the war, and the same goes for my country as well. **[He pauses]**If we had understood the nature of the conflict, the effects of the virus on humans, the ferocity of the enemy, we may have been able to prevent many tragedies from happening.

You may have heard of the chaos following the fall of Berlin, wholesale riots in France, suicides in Austria, mercy killings in Hamburg. People were in a state of panic, knowing this black wave of an enemy was heading straight for them, sparing nothing in its wake. That was how our department started the propaganda, to remind citizens to donate their time and money into contributing to the war effort. Radio broadcasts were on twenty four hours a day, telling people to buy war bonds or volunteer for the nearest armed regiment. We also offered segments on survival skills such as what to do in case of a Chimera attack and basic foods and tools you need for survival. The government also did a complete about face and disclosed everything they knew about the Chimera. People are more scared of the enemy they can't see than the one they can.

**Was it a success?**

I can't really comment on that, considering I was not part of the European department's efforts, and the fact that most of their target audience is now either dead or no longer human. The Asian department didn't have much success as well, the majority of the peasants and civilian population we tried to reach did not have adequate communication tools, such as radios or TVs like your American audience. Most of our warnings had to be issued by courier, poster or by word of mouth, by then most of the populations had been eradicated. Mongolia for instance, fell without either side of the Sino-Japanese war noticing.

I do not blame them. The Chimeran advance happened too fast for any effective propaganda to take effect. Both soldier and civilian were trying their best to not only stay alive, but flee westwards to the sea. You must understand the profound psychological effect the Chimera had on the populace as a whole. Battle fatigue cases spiked up since the fall of Berlin, caused mainly by the fear of the Chimera and the fact that the standard soldier had no idea how to confront one. Our department first countered that by issuing pamphlets to our soldiers, letting them in on all the information the allied governments had available on the Chimera and how best to fight them.

Have you heard of Sergeant Hamlin? The man who took on a Stalker tank alone and won by getting around it's backside and firing at the power core? We've distributed thousands of pamphlets to the troops containing information on Hamlin's method, as it became known. It was not an instant success but we did see a ten percent drop in battle fatigue cases as soldiers were now given a chance to both physically and mentally prepare themselves against the new enemy.

Suicides were another thing our department fought to combat. With the fall of Europe and Asia's great cities and the deaths of Millions, who wouldn't have lost hope and the will to go on? The suicides hit the medical corps the hardest. Can you imagine the stress or mental strain a medic would have to go through in the field? Considering he would be responsible for killing hundreds of his patients, his friends, with shots of morphine or a bullet to the head? I'm not in their situation, so I cannot comment or even begin to comprehend, but it's not hard to believe that the faces of the hundreds of patients they had to 'save' are etched somewhere in their minds. Medics were killing themselves at an alarming rate, along with the civilian population in the destroyed areas, so we sought to play broadcasts that focused only on the good news. The heroic stand of the Greek army at Thermopylae, the evacuation of Beijing between Cooperating Japanese and Chinese forces. These were the kinds of stories the government encourage us to run.

At the same time, our staff had a hard time processing all the data coming in. The rate of the Chimeran advance saw to that. Aside from having to receive reports from thousands of locations in Asia and Europe, we would also have a tough time verifying the authenticity or the relevance of the information. A broadcast from the city of Frankfurt might be useless within hours because the Chimera had already overrun the area. That was what happened after the fall of Berlin. The French army had crossed the Rhine to remove the Nazis from power, they succeeded in conquering a large swath of Western Germany. What they didn't realize now was that they were now sitting ducks in the open, sort on ammo and fuel from their initial drive. The Chimeran picked them off or devoured them within days. The bulk of the French army and West Germany. At that point, even the propaganda stations had to advise the civilians to head for the Atlantic.

At least the Europeans had that. I cannot even begin to fathom how many lost their lives in Asia when the Chimera attacked…

**Well, you can tell me a bit more about your experiences with the Imperal Japanese Army…..**


	24. The Invasion of Asia

_**USS Ticonderoga, Off the Coast of Japan**_

**[The naval crews are in a state of high alert right now, as a large unidentified 'creature' has made its way onto the ship's sonar. Around fifty five fathoms down, Yamazaki explains to me, the men believe it to be a living creature, and the captain has already ordered the ship to prepare their depth charges. The shape on the screen did not resemble any known marine animal in the area, then again, no whales or any other sea life have been sighted on the coast of Japan all week. The state of alarm was lifted when the 'creature', for lack of a better word, simply vanished off the screen without a trace. Visibly shaken, Yamazaki continues the interview.]**

The western world has called the twelve years of conflict in China the second period of the Warring States. That is not far from the truth. In reality, the war Japan fought against the Chinese was not against China as a country, but a collection of fiefdoms and small kingdoms that allied with each other. A federation if you will. Before, China could have claimed to be a nation, but the death of the Generalissimo saw the fragmentation of his forces into a number of smaller states and factions. There were the communists, the nationalists, even the liberation fronts for regions such as Tibet and Formosa. For the Imperial Government of Japan, the death of the Generalissimo was a mixed blessing. We were no longer fighting a united enemy, and were free to pick the Chinese apart piecemeal. But at the same time, your American president was forced into dealing with the situation in China, lest our country grew too strong. More supplies and arms were flowing into China, and the Prime Minister was seriously considering war with your country.

The emperor however, was aware of the American advancements in Technology, such as your Manhattan project. The testing off Alaska had convinced our government that there were more subtle ways to avert American help.

**And that is?**

For one thing, our timetable of conquest for China was spread out. The Emperor and his cabinet can afford patience. He plans his campaigns and sees them in decades, your American presidents, with their four year terms, think only in years. A puppet state of Manchuria was created, and slowly, but surely, our forces advanced, making sure to take our time consolidating the land behind. It was a compromise between the hawks who wanted to immediately attack America, and the more cautious politicians who saw the power of your Manhattan project. Our forces would pursue a plan of deliberately slow action, to not create huge disturbances that would be caught by the international community, and at the same time, we would take our time snuffing out the Guerrilla forces that opposed us.

That is what gave birth to the warring states. Our presence in China, in time, became routine. Our advances, and the war itself, became routine, a part that was quickly integrated into people's thoughts and lives. With no reports of huge battles and massacres on the scale of Shanghai, the American public and politicians slowly adopted to the routine, and got used to our presence. The Chinese began fighting against each other, seeking our help or sometimes even allying against each other, or even against us. The situation was fragmented, both politically and socially. And we took advantage of it. The Prime Minister estimated that another decade would see us conquer the whole of China.

**Were there any warning signs of the coming of the Chimera?**

At first, the empire had received slight warnings about the situation in Russia. Our diplomat in St. Petersburg had failed to report back following the disappearance of the Romanov family. We also received other reports of skirmishes and wild animal attacks along the border in Manchuria forced us to keep the area in a state of high alert. The newly approaching cold front didn't help either. By winter, all of Manchuria and Korea was covered in snow, heavy rains, and hail.

At the time, I was stationed with an infantry regiment in Manchukuo, under orders from the provisional government of the Manchurian emperor. It was one of our great strongholds, the springing point for all our operations into China. It was there that the first disturbances in the North occurred.

**What happened?**

First of all, we noticed a small trickle of refugees coming across the border. These weren't Russian, but Tartars, Siberians, and Mongolians. They arrived in a weakened and ragged state, and almost all of them died from the cold on arrival. The few that we managed to interrogate could barely utter any words at all. Just something incomprehensible about approaching 'demons' and monsters.

This went on for several months, up until we received reports of the invasion of Europe. We've heard all the fantastic reports coming from your theatre, about the fall of the Polish front, the failure of Winter Storm and stories of mass panic in the cities of Danzig and Vienna. Tales of an unknown enemy that barely resemble anything human.

Stories of this kind were quickly snuffed out by the Imperial Military Police. Prime Minister Tojo would hear none of it, saying it was all Western propaganda designed to distract us from our goals in China. Still, I noticed a quick build up of security in the North, and also that the flow of refugees and animals coming from the north had stopped completely. For the next few weeks, our men looked out into the cold, foggy plains of Russia and saw literally nothing. Not a single bird, or man. Just cold, dense fog.

Then it happened.

It wasn't some grand invasion that the Europeans experienced, but it was steadily approaching wave nonetheless. One by one, central command had received reports of divisions disappearing along the border, vanishing without a trace. We are talking about fully manned and experienced formations, thousands of men, gone just like that.

The attacks began shortly after. We've received aerial footage of a herd of what you called Goliath and stalker tanks. Huge mechanical constructions that punched a hole into every part of our line. We lost our first major city within twenty four hours. Despite us having fortified it with every soldier in the area. It fell without a fight. High command was deeply disturbed by this. Were our men surrendering?

We've also received reports of deserters. Something I never expected to hear about in the Imperial army. Each Japanese soldier is taught to never be captured, never break down, and never surrender. To be a coward or to be captured was a disgrace to one's family, community, and country. Each soldier was trained to fight to the death and was expected to die before suffering dishonor. Honor, we were taught, was everything. The only thing important to our soldiers. Our men had fulfilled that expectation in all their battles.

Now, for some reason, we've begun receiving reports of men breaking down at the front. Sometimes they would shoot themselves in the head, other times they would simply freeze in the face of the enemy. The men had begun referring to the invader as 'Oni', meaning humanoid demon. We were also receiving reports of other types of Oni. Four legged beasts the size of a Siberian tiger, swarms of scorpion like creatures that would overwhelm a man and devour him alive.

The higher ups were infuriated at the 'weak-kneed' men and did the only thing they knew. Mass beheadings of any cowards became common place among all regiments. Our own regiment lost twelve men in succession to these 'coward' beheadings. The 'Oni', our commander told us, were inferior to us. They were but a test from the gods to challenge our meddle, and we were failing in our duty and honor.

The Army gathered itself temporarily, and soon our men were rushing headlong into the Oni like demons themselves. All along the front, battles began breaking out between us and the Oni, who also revel in hand to hand combat. They were strong beasts, tearing and biting off limbs of many brave men. Our men braved it, and countered with their own ferocity and fervor. I've seen firsthand, an officer trying to choke an Oni by jamming his katana down the creature's throat, or even soldiers taking the pins off their grenades and rushing them head on. It eventually became common for soldiers to attach themselves with satchel charges as they rushed an Oni. Because if they were unable to kill it themselves, then they would detonate their explosives with their last dying breath, taking the enemy with them. This was an effective method when used in small groups, but it was disastrous when we started attaching bombs to whole regiments of men. A single artillery shell or a misfired rifle usually did more damage than an entire battalion of Oni's.

**Did this have any effect on the morale of the troops?**

I must give credit to the heroes of the Imperial army. After the fall of Harbin in Northern Manchukuo, the army regathered their efforts. Our soldiers were able for the moment, to focus their minds despite the tragedies. Launching counterattacks with a ferocity that equaled the Oni. Morale was high as soldiers once again rediscovered the glory of serving the emperor. More and more soldiers volunteered to lead their banzai charges against the walking machines. Latching onto a part and crippling it with their bomb vests.

Soon, the men became known as the great Kamikaze, or 'Divine Wind'. We took down many of their legions of stalkers and goliaths with these charges and our own tanks and artillery.

However, my commander was a wise man, and he too saw that our own army's strength was dwindling day by day, and that we too, were losing ground despite the ferocity of the men.

Of morale, I cannot say much. Though the cases of mental breakdowns were growing less, my friend, an old army doctor, simply told me that we were suffering mental breakdowns on a vast scale. The army, in a sense, was breaking down mentally as a whole.

"How can you say that my friend? When you see how bravely our men fight the Oni? They fight like Tigers!" I told him. There were no breakdowns here! The Japanese soldier was the perfect fighting specimen.

The old doctor simply shook his head, telling me that the ferocity of my men comes not from discipline, but from desperation. The men charging the Oni are like a mouse charging a cat. He told me. Therein lies the breakdown. He said. Because the mouse has every impulse to run from the cat.

"A cornered mouse can still attack a cat." I remember myself saying, quite offended.

The doctor nodded in agreement with me, and he continued.

"That is because the mouse itself is seeking death, in order to escape of pain of having to live in a situation where it knows it has no hope. No future."

I remember him telling that to me, just as my regiment received orders to move to the front with my men. It was the last time I saw the doctor, but I could not help but remember his words as I saw my own men gripping their rifles with anticipation, as the trucks took us up to the frontlines…..

**[The Invasion of Asia took place several weeks after Europe. Allied commanders are still uncertain as to the full extent of the numbers of battles between the IJA and the Chimera that had invaded Manchuria. The IJA and its casualties, regarded as the highest fatality ratio of all the allied forces, remains a hotly debated topic today in Military circles.]  
><strong>

**NEXT UPDATE: The Coast of Italy, Mysterious sightings in the Mediteranean**


	25. The Fall of Venice and Sea Creatures?

**Pearl Harbour, Hawaii (Japanese Defensive Perimeter)**

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><p><strong>[Returning from the expedition to Japan, the Allied Naval forces rest and refit in the central naval base and hub for the entire Pacific Ocean. Lined up on the famous Battleship Row, are the battleships of both the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. As I make my way along the deck, I see Japanese crews working feverishly to prepare the massive 70,000 ton Yamata battleship, while next to her, lies the US Pennsylvania-class Battleship, the Arizona. Although no naval battles have been fought as of yet, heavy losses have occurred in all the world's navies with the fall of almost all of Eurasia's ports and harbors. The Imperial Japanese navy itself was hardest hit from the battle on the home islands. Yet despite that, Pearl Harbor is almost overflowing with capacity as warships cover almost every square inch of water around the naval base. Gunther Krech, a German U-boat commander, runs me through the tour of battleship row during one of his furloughs.]<strong>

You've probably heard of the mass panic that resulted from the invader's as they took over Europe. What you probably haven't heard much of, were the massacres that occurred in all the great harbors of Europe. I was only stationed in Venice you see, when this happened, but people tell me it was repeated everywhere else across the continent. Barcelona, Danzig, Athens, Genoa, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Antwerp…the list goes on, anywhere in Europe where land meets water, people were swarming the ships, desperately trying to get away from the Chimera horde that literally were breathing down their necks from behind. I can't even begin to fathom how many people got killed in these traps, either by the Chimera or by each other or from simply drowning.

I was stationed as part of a UED evacuation force that was supposed to provide naval transport and artillery support for the land forces in Italy. By that time the Chimera had already absorbed Germany as a whole, along with Yugoslavia, and were already making their way across the Rhine into Belgium and France, while the Greeks and Brits held them at Thermoplyae in Greece. That left only the Italian front, and I can only say that with the outdated tanks and equipment the Italian leader was kind enough to provide for his men, it was a soft spot that was going to be exploited.

**[He shakes his head]**

Don't get me wrong, the Italians are marvelous soldiers, and I've known many German army instructors who have gone to the country for Alpine combat training. However, what's the use of having good men if you just give them sardine cans for tanks?

Anyways I'm getting sidetracked. What matters that night was that the Italian army was losing on all fronts, and the civilians from all over Europe were already rushing towards the nearest port to get to the sea. As far as we knew at that time, the Chimera possessed no naval units or means of traveling over water, so it was a natural instinct for the people to flee towards the harbor cities.

Our U-boat was a Class X (XB) type, the largest U-boat ever constructed by the German navy. Our original purpose was to lay mines on enemy sea lanes, but we also doubled as a long range cargo ship, and that was our purpose in Venice. The Italian government did not have enough ships necessary to evacuate all the refugees, so they called us in for a hand. Granted, our men were anxious as well about our own country, but we accepted the fact that being in the Mediteranean and all, there was little we could do. We also knew that somewhere in the crowd of panicking refugees, were at least some Austrians and Germans who could inform us of the conditions at home. Either way, we had a duty to save those people, and we performed it.

Venice itself is a city built on islands, and that was the worst part of the evacuation. We've had hundreds of ships in the harbor, either anchoring off shore or sending in small boats. Some fools even tried navigating their huge tankers into the bottleneck at Burano island. There were many instances of tankers and cargo ships simply colliding into each other and tearing their hulls apart, dragging their crews and passengers to drown in the bottom of the lagoon.

We took the pragmatic approach, sending in our lifeboats with officers and armed men to evacuate as many civilians as possible that we could hold. We had to arm them, otherwise the people on the shore would probably overwhelm and kill them for their boats. I can only say the men who volunteered for this duty were brave to the extreme, as we've had a few boats fail to return with their officers.

We also took care to surface ourselves a good few miles away from the main harbor. Not only were there hundreds of ships of all shapes and sizes crammed tightly together in a small Lagoon with a bottleneck, but there was always this crazy mass of humanity just waiting at the docks. I saw, with my own communications officer, thousands of people literally just jumping into the sea to swim madly for the ships. Many times, anything smaller than a yacht would be capsized by the sheer number of people trying to board it. It was mass panic, pure and simple. I saw more people, who had no idea how to swim but jumped in the water anyway, jump on their fellow swimmers and cling to them like a flotation device, usually drowning them both. The most haunting part was that eventually the harbor became so clogged with bodies, some ships couldn't even leave and some of the more ingenious swimmers used their bodies as floatation devices to reach the ships.

Behind the crowd, Venice was already burning, and the howling sounds of tens of thousands of leapers and Chimeran foot soldiers were already driving the crowd further into the water. I saw a French battleship, the _Lorraine_ open up on a Chimeran Goliath that tried to break through to the harbor, blasting a hole right through its side. The Chimera were getting too close for comfort, and soon, we had to leave.

A good portion of the ships were military, either battleships providing cover or other ships assigned to transport capacities, such as us. Yet there were also a greater number of civilian craft. These ranged from yachts, to cruise ships, to even little fishing boats and rowboats. I've seen almost everything happen in the harbour that night. Some of the boat owners would charge their passengers everything they had before taking them on the boat, other boats would select only rich people, others would forbid Jews or Blacks on, or some would only take young girls. It was the stupidest thing you could ever see, pure stupid and blind hatred and prejudice. Exactly the type of thing you'd expect from the end of the world.

Of course, they were the exceptions. There were many good, decent people out there who did this to save lives. I really admire the fishing boats, knowing full well that every trip they took back to the harbor, they risked getting shot, stabbed or burned for their boats.

By the time I felt that our U-boat had taken the full capacity, I gave the order to submerge, charting a course for the next safe harbor at Corsica. Some of the refugees said that wasn't far enough, and begged me to make my way to America, ignoring the fact that I only had enough rations for the crew and maybe even them for a few days.

It was then that my first lieutenant picked up something on our Sonar. A huge blip that moved its way towards the Venetian harbor. It was odd because the sound pulses the object emitted resembled nothing like the propeller of a fellow submarine or any allied naval craft. I learned that this solid object…whatever it was, was heading towards the _Lorraine_.

I ordered the crew to turn off all unnecessary machinery and halt all movement as we moved into Passive sonar surveillance. It lasted for the next few minutes as we watched the object approach under the _Lorraine's_ Hull.

I don't know, to this day, what happened next, but within minutes, we heard the familiar groan of steel straining, as if under enormous pressure. It somewhat resembles the long groan we hear from ships' steel hulls after a torpedo hit, but this was far more dragged out, not resembling an explosion. Something was pushing against the _Lorraine's_ hull.

Next thing we knew, the _Lorraine_ capsized, sending hundreds of its crew members into the freezing Mediteranean. Our crew picked up their screams on the sonar, and watched as one by one, the men either drowned or disappeared beneath the waves forever.

It was then we heard the sound, some ear splitting screech that emitted from the creature that tipped over the _Lorraine_. I alerted all nearby submarines to its presence and they were already reporting contact with the creature, but it was too fast for our U-boats. We lost contact with the first few that entered the creature's path, but by then it had lost interest in us, seeming content to target the hulls of the large ocean liners and tankers. As much as we wanted to combat it, our first priority was evacuating the civilians, so we had no choice but to leave the area for the other combat ships that were covering the evacuation.

**Do you believe that the Chimera have somehow found a way to infect creatures at sea?**

I don't see why not. The virus seems to work pretty well against mammals such as us Humans and livestock. I'm not a scientist, so I can't comment on the biology, but when we take into account the fact that almost all the Chimeran Conversion Centres we've discovered so far have been near the water, either at a seafood cannery or a port. The ocean too, is the perfect environment for the Chimera because it is one of the coldest places on earth, no need for any of those cooling machines to be strapped on one of the creatures because the ocean can cool them instantly. It isn't too far of a stretch to imagine them capturing a whale and then infecting it, or maybe just using the bodies of humans to make a creature that could swim.

All I know is, ever since Venice, we've been getting reports of missing persons near the coast as well as lost swimmers all around the world. It's a very real threat, in my opinion. And it can only get worse, although we have depth charges and torpedoes, the fact that they are animals makes them a lot more versatile than our metallic submarines and battleships. I can even imagine that is exactly what happened to the British Navy when they tried to defend the Channel. These creatures got to them.

**Has anyone ever successfully taken a picture of these creatures?**

Only two photographs are known at this time. The first was credited towards a U-boat convoy heading to Spain. It was a routine mission, and the story goes that the U-boat had surfaced during the night to recharge her batteries and give the sailors a chance to have a smoke. While they were surfaced, an enormous sea creature appeared and climbed onto the side of the ship. The men were frightened, and began shooting at it with their sidearms, which only annoyed the beast and made it bite down on or grab hold of the forward gun. The sea monster was so massive that the U-boat began to slip to the side, and the captain feared that the open hatch might slip below the water level, flooding the interior of the boat and sinking her. The crew continued firing away at the monster, who eventually grew tired of such things and left, swimming back into the mysterious depths from which it came. The U-boat quickly submerged and chased after it, and they had to use strong lights just to find the thing and take a picture of it, but all in all, despite getting shot at, it was unusually passive.

The second picture we have is from a civilian deep sea diver off the coast of Malta. Probably one of the last civilians to have gone before the UED instituted a systematic ban on the coastlines of the continent. It was found at the bottom of the ocean by another U-boat patrol.

**He hands me the photograph (titled 'Leviathan')  
><strong>

I don't think we ever found the diver.

**[Reports of missing divers and swimmers have become widespread since the fall of Danzig. Although there is speculation of infection amongst aquatic animals, there has been no documented proof of any sea animals undergoing the conversion process. With the end of the war in Europe, sea sightings have disappeared almost entirely. The identity of the creatures in the sightings, and their connection to the Chimera remain a mystery to this day.] **

**Next update: Conversion Centres**

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><p><strong>this was actually a story i did five years ago (on hiatus) i may go back and finish it (resistance 2 kinda deflated my interest in this universe). But here are some remaining chappys :)<br>**

**Master of the Boot : **Thanks for the EPIC reviews haha, i'll see if i can finally finish this.

**Zorkandpals321** :Thanks for the review, glad you like it, i'll post the rest of what I have and may possibly start writing this up again :)


	26. The Siege of Nanking

**[Information on the Chimeran invasion in the Far East remains scant at best, but even the most skeptical of experts agree that China suffered the most casualties out of any Asian country. Fractured by civil war and home to a population of several hundred million, the Chimera, it was rumored, had consumed the entire country within a Month. Due to the small numbers of Chinese survivors and the lack of any concrete record, we may never know what truly happened in the fight for the mainland. Only one last stand account of any note has been recorded by survivors, which is known today as the siege of Nanking. One of the largest cities in China, it held over two million souls by the time the Chimera had arrived at their doorsteps. Frank Xing, a former army medic and presently, a practitioner of Oriental Medicine in San Francisco, recalls the hectic, nightmarish conditions he faced during the siege]**

My past memories of Nanking as a city were good. To be a citizen in one of the most celebrated capitals of China, its greatest literary, artistic and political location. Ever since I grew up in the city, I've always had been fascinated by all the imperial palaces, lavish tombs, museums and memorials, not to mention the beautiful lakes, gardens and mountains that surrounded the outskirts. As a child, I would always take the train to the countryside with my parents just to observe. It was also because of the heat. Our city was known as one of the great furnaces in China, and during the Summer, we would always join the crowds of people as they left the city for the seaside resorts. I've lost track of the number of times we spent our nights conversing with neighbours in the street, and sleeping in the open air of the countryside. To me, Nanking represented both the modern and the ancient China in its best form. It was called "The New York City of China".

When Summer came, we heard scattered reports of the war front up north. None of us paid any attention.

The rumors of war were far off at the time, and none of us thought the Japanese would ever reach our doorstep.

At that time, I didn't think anything of it. The Japanese had been at war with us for years, so much so it had become routine. No one thought that it would have only taken a few weeks for the madness to reach us, before we knew it our homes were in flames and our streets drenched with blood.

**Weren't there any warning signs?**

None what so ever, the warlords was just as adept at keeping information from us as your western governments. But even I doubt they would have known about the true extent of the danger.

If you're looking for any clues, perhaps I should mention the weather. Historically, our region is considered one of the hottest and most humid in China, hence the 'giant furnace' nickname. But the past year or so we noticed a very sharp decline in temperatures. Warm perhaps for your standards but unusual for us. The countryside was no longer warm enough to sleep in the open air in, and less and less people began leaving the city to visit the country in the summer.

We thought it was a routine cooling, but before we could even guess at what might have caused it, they invaded.

**The distance from the front to Nanking was guessed at 100 miles. They broke through the Chinese front that quickly?**

I wouldn't be surprised, considering the confused nature of our war. We had warlords fighting each other as well as the Japanese, there was no front line to speak of from my understanding.

But yes, it happened as fast as they said, perhaps even faster! One morning, upon arriving at the clinic, I felt a very cold chill in the air, and the next thing I knew, the entire city went to hell.

The sirens were our first warning, a warning that we should have picked up weeks ago. No one thought much of it, even my assistant nurse asked me, "Are they giving us an Air raid practice? They didn't announce this in the papers."

This was no unusual, with the war against the Japanese growing worse, the officials ordered us to drill for an air raid, as well as construct bomb shelter and camouflage for our houses. Every you saw men painting black on red rooftops and digging holes for their families to hide in. My friend jokingly remarked to me that it was like the city was preparing for "a funeral on a large scale."

Thinking back on it. It chills me to think how right he was.

The first bombardments took the city by surprise. None landed near my office, but I saw they were firing large rockets at us, a dull rumbling sound that resembled thunder. Minutes later, we heard the machine gun fire and airplanes overhead. It was then that I told my assistant to get everyone in the clinic ready for an influx of patients. I also took the time to call my family and told them to make their way to the harbour.

I remembered being horrified at how the enemy bombed us so indiscriminantly. The missiles hit schools, hospitals, powerplants, even the poorhouses and slums. The streets began filling with a tidal wave of people, trampling each other to get out of the city. I noticed too, from my office that large sections of the city had fallen deathly silent, save for this inhuman screech that made us shake.

The city was in full panic. I've heard stories of families who strapped themselves underneath overcrowded trains to leave the city, hanging literally inches off the ground. Others hide in cemetaries and the countryside, I dont think any of them were seen again.

A good chunk of the city however, like me, chose to remain, adopting a wait-and-see attitude. For us, the first week of the siege was terrible. Our troops had suffered harshly against these monstrous creatures, and every day we'd have more men returning from the battlefront, shaken, exhausted, wounded and completely demoralized. We didn't know what enemy they faced, but we took heart at the presence of almost 300,000 fresh troops in the city, with tanks and modern rifles and machine guns.

General Tang, the commander of our front, personally sent orders through the civilian radio, to reassure us of the defense.

Almost overnight the troops transformed Nanking, digging trenches in the streets and laying down underground telephone wires and stringing up barbed wire at all the intersections. They shut down all the gates save three, leaving them for military use. The troops had the gates barricaded with sandbags twenty feet deep and reinforced with wood and iron. Nothing was getting in, we thought. Several gates were simply walled up with concrete.

There was also a plan by the General to scorch the land around the entire circumference of the city, burning many of the attackers alive. Every one of us who has survived recalled that the first three nights were bright as day. The fire was unstoppable, consuming petrol and ammunition dumps, barracks, parks and farmhouses. I could tell by the resolve of the army that we were prepared to resist for months.

**[Xing shakes his head visibly]  
><strong>  
>We lasted perhaps two days at most.<p>

It is only today that I realize how badly the defenses were planned. When the government officials fled the city days before, they took all the sophisticated radios and equipment with them, our army was large, and none of the parts could communicate with the other. Our troops too, spoke different dialects, the army having been meshed together from different regions. This created endless confusion in the hospitals and barracks.

The attack didn't last long. The waves of enemy simply climbed over our barricades and swarmed the streets. Our men fought as bravely as they could, but there was no coordination or order, and the monsters simply broke into houses and foxholes, shooting everyone or tearing them apart or consuming them alive.

We didn't know it then, but by the first day, over half the city was lost, the streets were filled with bodies and the ones who could still move were taking flight. The roads were jammed full with cars, horses and refugees. Anyone with half a brain was trying to escape now.

It was horrific, because now we know that they invaders were infecting bodies, but there was so much people in the city, it took them days to catch and eat or infect them all.

The order to retreat came, and by then the troops were thrown into chaos. Officers ran through the streets, yelling at any soldiers they found to drop their weapons and run, leaving the civilians in the area exposed. While in other places, the order never reached them and they assumed the fleeing soldiers were deserters, machine gunning them down almost on the spot. I saw one tank rolling over a crowd of civilians as it tried to flee through the city gates, crushing dozens of them before a grenade destroyed it. Other soldiers were hysterical, stripping their uniforms and taking civilian clothes in hopes of being safe. Those idiots, did the monsters even spare civilians? Had the thought not even occur to them?

My clinic was overrun by the monsters by then, and I took my staff into the streets in hopes of escape

By this time, non-humanoid creatures attacked the crowds, like giant spiders plucking random people from the fleeing masses and tearing them apart or wrapping them inside these cocoons while screaming. (this is the first document sighting of 'spinners' known to SPRA) While in the houses, the monsters ripped their way into the masses of humanity. The streets themselves were beginning to feel slippery with blood.

**[Xing visibly shakes at the memory]**

Night came hours later, and the screams continued. My staff and I watched from one of the government buildings near the outskirts.

I think there were people still fleeing the city, not knowing how the majority of them were killed in the day. Mobs of people still wandered the streets, terror-mad and being slaughtered. I don't think the shooting and shelling stopped any time during the two days. Nanking was a large city, and even the creatures had to take time hunting down everyone alive. They ignored the infected carpet of bodies, going after the still living ones. Fires broke out on the Chungshan road, and flames began sweeping through heaps of abandoned ammunition and houses and vehicles. I saw several soldiers tear themselves away from the mob, climbing the walls rather than get pressed into the inferno as hundreds of others were.

The harbour itself was bedlam, with thousands of people diving into the war in logs, boards, buckets, bathtubs, anything that could float. Manysimply shot them in the water, or they fell victim to the sea creatures by the harbour.

That was just the first day. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands perished.

**How did you manage to keep the Chimera out of your hiding place?**

We followed the common practice that many other surviving groups tried, we barricaded the entrances with bodies. Infected bodies. It was a grisly resource, but they were plentiful, and the monsters were taking their time gathering all the hundreds of thousands of bodies in the streets, we figured it would be a while before they reached us. It remains a mystery to us, but the creatures seemed to avoid the infected bodies, perhaps already regarding them as one of their own.

The second day revealed to us just how much Nanking had been destroyed within a day. Sections of the city were still on fire, almost all the buildings were reduced to ruin. The streets were filled with bodies and smeared with blood, and we saw the creatures were hard at work. The humanoid ones were carrying and eating the carcasses of horses, while the little insects began spinning their webs around the bodies of the still civilians. Thousands of civilians were being suspended in mid air, being engulfed by these red fleshy cocoons. Most of the mobs had been either killed or infected, but there were still groups of people fighting, as we heard from the gunfire around the city center. Screams continued on through the day , as they did in the night...I did not even want to contemplate what they were doing to the ones still alive.

We wasted no time, we chose the evening of the second day to move to the Airport. The last transmission on the radio waves was that the airport was the last point of resistance, with the British and Americans offering evacuation with their temporary control of the skies. We estimated we had perhaps a day at most before they were gone.

**How did you elude the Chimera?**

The same way we did before. We took any infected bodies we could carry, in some cases, children lying motionless in the streets, and crawled our way through the carpet of humanity.

There were ten of us then, and some of the staff couldn't take it. One of my nurses screamed in horror as she recognized the face of someone in the carpet of corpses we were crawling through. All of us remained still and silent even as the creatures tore her apart limb from limb...

**[Xing lowers his head, shamed by the memory]**

We went through an old warehouse in the former industrial district, it was then that we noticed that the thick carpet of bodies soon became a mountain...They were gathering them in this place.

My staff and I realized that the creatures were gathering here, and decided to make a detour through the main road. taking our chances on the fact that there were so many bodies that they wouldn't notice us.

Still...there was one odd thing we noticed about the bodies in the warehouse, although they resembled what used to be human beings, we noticed that almost all of them were distinctly female...The creatures never violated any women to be sure, preferring to eat or tear humans apart...but maybe the purpose was something just as sinister.**(similar 'gathering grounds' of female bodies were observed in the French campaign, the purpose can only be speculated.)**

It took us the better part of the day to crawl through the bodies, by the evening we were running out of them to hide in, the creatures had already taken most of them to be placed into Cocoons, sooner or later we had to run for it. We followed the Chungshan east road towards the Airport, where the gunfire was getting louder and louder.

By then the creatures had noticed us, so the remaining nine of us ran. The American and British troops noticed us, along with the creatures, and a firefight ensued. Two of my men screamed when they got tagged in the back, torn to pieces by the enemy bullets before they could respond. Another was impaled by a giant spider like creature that hid amongst the bodies.

I didn't see, all I did was run towards the human voices above the shouting, like a madman. Before I knew it, I felt hands pulling me into the nearest helicopter out of there...I didn't remember anything after that.

I didn't know it at the time, but out of the ten of us...only two of us made it to the aircraft.

I was truly lucky that day, ever since then, I've learned that their were other groups like mine, some even numbering hundreds or thousands. Pockets of resistance from citizens who couldn't escape continuing in Nanking for weeks after the initial battle. Many of the bodies were put into cocoons, transforming the cityscape into some kind of organic fleshy colour.

By the end of week two, aerial surveillance of the city showed nothing but red, smears of blood, bodies, and cocoons...with one noticeable difference.

Most of the Cocoons had already been opened up...from the inside.

* * *

><p><strong>Marshal Belinsky:<strong> Thanks Marshal :)

**Anime Borat:** Thanks Anime Borat for the review! I always did think of the Chimeran sea creatures has having been infected forms of aquatic life on earth, after all, we never see any whales or fish in the games, i'd presume they were all consumed. Great info about the alpine infantry, I obviously had no idea about that!

**Pollardinator:** I originally planned on carrying this to Resistance 2, but I was supremely disappointed with that game. I've only written this to the end of Resistance 1 (in the timeline anyway), so the final updates may be forthcoming soon. Whether i do plan on writing further, i'll see. Thanks for reading!

**Madman With A Keyboard**: I figured i'll post what i have left, going up to the end of deliverance, and we'll see where i can go from there :)

**Zorkandpals321**: Thanks Zork! XD


	27. Deliverance - Day 1 : Conversion Centres

**Day 1: Operation Deliverance July 11th, 1951. (Radio station in Iceland)**

**[It has begun. The largest American seaborne assault in History. Over two dozen heavy capital ships and carriers of the US Atlantic fleet have made their way to the Eastern coast of England. Security on information is maintained through the strictest channels, so much so that only intelligence officers could have access to it. Pulling a few strings through the few contacts I've had in the British government, Sir Archibald Campbell manages to find an opening for me to become enlisted as part of the Civilian arm of the Allied Intelligence corps, responsible for compiling information. Though this may place some restrictions on me in the future, it is a price I will be willing to pay to get closer to the truth. I interview Sergeant James Grayson, a former British Marine and the only known documented survivor thus far who has escaped from a Chimeran conversion centre.]**

Our platoon was ambushed during the retreat from Venice. Although a bulk of the civilian refugees were trapped in Venice's harbour, there were still hundreds of thousands of stragglers in the countryside, mostly those who gave up on any chance of escaping via the Adriatic. The entire countryside resembled a series of long ragged snakes, huge columns of refugees fleeing westwards and shedding off any excess baggage along the way. My platoon was caught up in one of these columns, and we saw it all, discarded luggages, tables, fine china, clothing, equipment, beer barrels, bicycles, even a grand piano! No one seemed to mind as people tossed their valuables onto the road, most were just eager to get away, at that point, money meant nothing to anyone.

We were part of the British Expeditionary force, assigned to assist in the defense of Italy, but the whole Italian army was destroyed within the first salvo of spire missiles. I had a friend who was there when they first broke through the line at Trieste. The UED forces had it all prepared, fortified trenches, tanks, barbed wire, artillery…the full monty. But the Chimera simply fired spire missiles throughout the line, and the entire area became infected within minutes. Just mountains of comatose bodies. Five army groups! Gone in a few minutes!

I don't know how my friend got out from there, maybe the bloke just plain ran. I don't blame him.

**How did the Chimera capture you?**

The five of us who were left in the platoon, (there were thirty of us to begin with), simply joined the refugees in the retreat. When we saw the spires in the sky, we knew we were finished. Some of the civilians started panicking, dropping everything and running away, as though they could get away. Others shot themselves or simply knelt down and prayed for a quick end. Me and my mates, we just shot at the damn thing. For all we cared, the world was going to end anyways.

One by one, the towering spire missiles hit the ground near the column, releasing the disease. We were lucky none landed near us, but for the next few minutes, we saw black clouds shrouding the hills near where the missiles landed, following by a wail of screams and choking sounds. All that was blanketed by a kind of insect like noise, like when you hear a swarm of locusts engulfing you. I started seeing the first victims fall to the ground, lying completely still after frantically wailing their arms and digging into their own skin.

This happened to thousands of people around us, and as we braced ourselves for the inevitable disease, a conventional Chimera shell landed square in the middle of my platoon and knocked us off our feet.

I don't know what happened, but from the on I felt like a truck just hit me. I was on the ground, and I remembered that it was very hard to breath. My vision was blurred white and all I could here was this ringing. I swore the last thing I heard before I went under was this vicious howl, then these ….things…clawing at me, grabbing my arms. I kicked and punched but I didn't have the strength to resist as they pulled me away.

I don't know how long I was out for, but when I woke up. I knew….what is it you yanks say? I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore…..

* * *

><p><strong>Note: This section was written before 'retribution' was released, so I can't speak entirely to how accurately it portrays grayson (haven't played it either lol)<strong>

**Thanks again all for the reviews/reads!**


	28. Deliverance - Day 2 : Escape

**Day 2: Operation Deliverance July 12th, 1951. York**

**[Day 2 has begun, and American forces for the first time have experienced battle against the Chimera. Cases of battle fatigue and mental breakdowns have skyrocketed among the U.S troops who have managed to return from the front wounded. Within hours, the first wave of troops in the US first rangers were either killed or infected to a man. Contact was lost with multiple units along the front line as the first sightings of Spires began appearing on the intel reports. James Grayson visibly shakes from the sound bytes of screams and gunfire he hears over the ham radio next to us, so I turn it off at his request.]**

* * *

><p><strong>I'm sorry if the memories are still too fresh….if you don't feel comfortable about this-<strong>

No…it's fine. **[He pauses.]** I just needed to catch my breath that's all.

As I was saying, me and my mates woke up in our cells next to each other inside one of those Chimera, prisons. If you can call it that.

**Can you describe what it is like from the inside?**

**[he nods/]** To my surprise. Some parts of it resembled a human building. There was electrical wiring all over the walls, but it was all built over the existing structure before. The doors were all gone, replaced by some sort of metallic tube that opened up whenever someone passed through. The whole place was something like being in the belly of a beast, mechanical tubes and circular passageways everywhere. Everything seemed to have a 'mechanical hive' feel to it. The only noise I could hear all day and night were just the sound of moving machines and steam, like some sort of heavy construction was going on. I guess it would be the closest thing to what honey feels like when it is stored by a bee. The scary thing was….it wasn't far from the truth of what they were doing to the people they captured here.

The 'cell', for lack of a better word, had nothing. No bed, no table, no chair, not even a bloody bucket. I guessed the occupants don't stay for long. The singular thing that we noticed was a massive tube that hung from the ceiling, as though the Chimera were using it to pour something into the room. Whatever it was, we agreed it wasn't good.

**Were there other people trapped with you?**

At least a dozen others. But we were all placed in separate cells in the same corridor. I wouldn't be able to see some of them, but I could tell they were civilians from the way they talked. The most remarkable thing was that many of them weren't even English. I heard some smacks of Polish, German, and Italian. But no matter the language, I could just tell by the panic in their voices as the screamed and rattled at the metal doors that this was the worst place to be.

**Were there any Chimera watching you?**

Quite the opposite actually. We thought we'd get the whole treatment, with armed guards and maybe even an 'interrogation'. We got none of that. Nothing but a bunch of Menials walking back and forth carrying things around.

**That's all they did?**

Not just any random things mind you. We saw them cart in bodies most of the time. That really got the civilians in the cells shouting. As if their cries would be heard by those thick-headed blokes. The menials didn't even bother replying or even grunting at them. As those they were just dead pieces of meat. As far as we knew, we already were. In fact, this whole place was like a slaughter block, we must have seen dozens of trolleys full of bodies being carted by us every hour.

My only guess of why we weren't joining those poor sods is probably because they didn't have enough 'virus' to infect such a large population of humans at once.

**Did you try and devise any means of escape?**

During the first few hours, that was on our minds. There were about three of us in the cell, one man from my old platoon and an Italian from another UED division. We were all that was left out of our division of ten thousand. The Chimera were careless, we thought, they didn't even bother searching us when they hauled us in. We practically had everything that we carried with us, so long as it was inside our bag or was strapped onto us. We each had our standard issue army knife and rations, and the menials didn't seem to mind as we laid them out and tried to find some way to get out of the cell. The wall of the cell however, had a small panel that resembled a ventilation cover. Chances are that with all the heavy machinery around the area, the Chimera needed some ventilation for breathing. We kept a mental note of that.

When the other prisoners saw what we were trying to do, they became anxious, shouting at us to let them free when we figured out how to get out. Their screams really got to my mates, and it wasn't until the Italian told them to shut the fuck up that we finally got some peace to think. Good man.

**Being in that place must have been terrifying though.**

Of course it was! It wasn't a simple walk in the park, but you think screaming every second you'd get at the top of your lungs will help? We could barely get any sleep because of the screaming or crying, but we didn't mind. We were planning on breaking out soon.

**After just a few hours of captivity?**

I wouldn't want to spend even five minutes there. But we had to wait a few hours to get used to the routine of the menials. Count the number of Chimera in the cell and plan our escape route. After interrogating the prisoners to find out their last whereabouts, we figured we were back near Venice, so that meant our best chance of escape was by the water. We prayed that a UED ship stayed behind for survivors.

Just as we were about to put our plan into motion, the screaming started again in the other cells.

The Chimera had finally released their virus into the other cells. Through the huge tubes in the ceilings came swarms of little things the size of cochroaches. We saw first hand the cell across from us. A man and two women occupied the cell and we saw it as thousands of the insects filled the air inside the cramped cell. The civilians were screaming, flailing their arms in the air and covering their faces as the insects swarmed all over them. I saw the man's eyes roll up when one of the creatures dug its way into his ear. After that, his arms just dropped like stone and more of them went through into his mouth. All three of them dropped dead on the ground after a few seconds, choking on the cockroaches as they went into their bodies.

The three of us immediately jumped up and headed for the ventilation cover. Using our knives to dig into the panel and our arms to force it open. More screams were erupting through the hallway, with each cell being filled by these creatures. We didn't look behind us even as the familiar sound of buzzing began within our own cell.

I closed my eyes, and heard nothing but buzzing, fully expecting a load of insects to go through my eyes and mouth, but before I realized it, our arms had given way and the metallic cover was loose. It was a man sized shaft, just enough for us to get away.

The three of us quickly went in. We planned to jam our packs on the entranceway, so those things wouldn't get in. But before we could cover up all the holes, a half dozen of the cochroaches broke through the small openings we had left. By that time I was already crawling through the vents when our Italian friend began rolling around the vent and screaming. He was holding his face, and I saw already that three of the creatures were latching into his face. Trying to go through his nose and mouth. A third was already halfway into his ear and the Italian soldier was starting to quiet down. It didn't take long before he became comatose as well, lying flat inside the vent while me and my mate watched helplessly.

We both looked at each other for a minute, tempted to go on, but we both decided then to drag our friend with us. His quick thinking after all, saved us. We would use our knives to dig those bastards out of him when we reached the surface.

We climbed through the vents for what seemed to be an eternity. In the darkness, we always heard the familiar hissing sound of machinery around us, along with the occasional scream or growl. Whether the sounds were human or not, we didn't know, we didn't want to know.

We eventually came through several rooms, crawling above them in the vents and observing what the Chimera did with all the bodies. For hundreds of meters, we saw nothing but tubes. Tubes filled with some sort of liquid and cocoons. Thousands of cocoons. It didn't take us long to figure out what was in them.

We passed by more rooms, and found that the sound of the machines were getting louder. This lasted for what felt like a mile, and we saw hundreds of chambers processing the cocoons. It was done efficiently, coolly, just like the assembly lines we've seen in our factories. But we felt chills come up our spine as we saw this…..they were processing the bodies, of our countrymen, of … our friends. **[He visibly shakes]**

Since we were dragging our friend, and because the whole factory itself was enormous, it took the two of us at least several hours to get to the other side of the building, where we saw the first rays of light come into the vent.

We both breathed sighs of relief when we saw that. The Chimera had built their centre on an old cannery, and we followed one of the old ducts straight to the surface, coming up in a small alleyway by the harbour.

By that time, we realized we were in Venice after all, but the city resembled very little of the one we had to withdraw a few days ago. The Chimera were starting construction on something, not even bothering to put out the fires as they began tearing down huge sections of the city. We both saw, first hand, the metallic structures that were rising from the ground, replacing old Venice with buildings that were more sinister and alien.  
>Me and my mate decided that there must have been a boat left in the harbour. Even a rowboat would have done it for me there.<p>

We snuck around the edge of the harbour for awhile, hiding amongst the bodies. They were still there, hundreds of thousands of them laid out in a thick carpet by the harbour. You could just tell what had happened the second before the spire missiles had landed. Most of them tried to escape by boat but ended up being a big fat target. We saw nothing but menials for miles around, harvesting and throwing bodies into a cart like they were potato sacks.

A few of the menials spotted us, and began to walk slowly towards us, almost methodical. We both pulled out our knives and began making our way through the crowd. I was carrying our Italian friend on my shoulder, so I had to rely on my partner to protect me. He was fighting back those menials like there was no tomorrow. I still remember the first one. It snarled at my partner, oblivious of the knife he was carrying. When he stabbed him in the shoulder, he tried to reach around his neck and bite him, ignoring the knife wound in the shoulder my mate gave him. He dropped though, when he pulled out the knife and sliced it through the creature's throat. The blood, ironically enough, was still red like a human's.

The both of us struggled for another ten minutes before we realized that there were too many of them, and we had to leave our Italian friend behind. But neither of us could bear having him suffer the same fate as the rest of them.

**[He pauses]**

I was the one who did it. I was a quick job. Clean, painless. Though I don't think any pain would have woken him up at that point.

The two of us started running now, and we heard the first shots fired from behind us. The regular 'infantry' had spotted us, and their growls were getting closer. Their red bullets clipping everything around us, even a few of the menials as we headed for the water. A boat that was still listing in the water.

We were so close.

**[To my surprise, He buries his head inside his hands]**

Oh god…I don't think I remembered what happened. But one of the shots must have hit him before we reached the boat. He went down onto the ground. He tried to get up but the menials went all over him, snarling and trying to tear him to pieces. Oh god I could see them biting, TEARING UP HIS SKIN. I can still hear his screaming. Screaming my name. **[he pauses]** I couldn't beat them away….

**[He visibly begins breaking down.]**

I had a knife…s-so I had to do it.

**[He starts crying]**

I did him a favour…yeah that's it. I had to help him…yeah that's it…Oh God. Maybe...Maybe I need to help myself too.

**[The other staff around me, just as astonished by Sergeant Grayson's breakdown, immediately begin to pick him up and carry him through the hallways. He begins sobbing and crying afterwards. After the interview, I never see the Sergeant again. I only find out later that Sergeant Grayson had no family left, save for one brother, who had served with him in the same platoon until they had been captured by the Chimera.]**


	29. Deliverance - Day 3 : The Fall of Greece

**Day 3: Operation Deliverance July 13th, 1951. Dover**

**[Dispatches from England are looking grim. Northern Command, the final bastion of British resistance on the home islands, had fallen to an underground assault by the Chimeran forces. With no more firm bases on the mainland, the AEF is coordinating with the remnants of the British Forces for one last major assault on London, where reports of a mysterious tower are emerging from. As part of the intelligence corps, I dig up several documents that may contain some more information about how the Chimera operate, perhaps some more clues about their towers and the mysteries of these so called 'angels'. The following are excerpts from the diaries of a Greek Soldier, private Kousiopoulos, and his account of the Battle of Thermopylae. The details of the retrieval remain a mystery to this day, save that it was recovered by the Americans.]**

* * *

><p><strong>Kilkis, Macedonia. January 20th, 1950<strong>

Our battalion, or what's left of it, had received final orders. Or at least, that was what the government told us. What a way to motivate, final orders?! What do they think we were? The three hundred Spartans? I've heard the stories from the northern front, how the Chimera drove two hundred thousand of the Romanian soldiers into the Danube, there is just no stopping them. Not even the mountains of Macedonia and the rivers could stop them. Every time the army had stopped to set up a fortified defense those missiles would come from the sky, killing everyone within minutes. The colonel says that we're defending the pass in a new way, something that had never been attempted before in warfare. I hope to god he is right.

**Thessalonica, Greece. January 22nd, 1950**

We're taking a rest in this port city for now. I've seen it all around us, everyone is exhausted and frightened. The last two days were spent fighting rearguard actions, covering the retreat as we left towns burning in our wake. The refugees are everywhere, a long snake of people and corpses stretching from the north and east, just trying to get away from being devoured. The monsters have already spilled over from Bulgaria and Albania, and if the latest reports are true, from Turkey as well. Istanbul, I hear, fell within minutes. Millions of people infected by their first wave of missiles, while those lucky enough to have been outside the city had fled. Thousands of refugees, Turks, Serbs, Kroats, Bulgarians, even Kurds from Armenia have made their way to this port city.

The harbor itself is chaos, and I think the government has already written this place off as unsalvageable. Any attempt to assert authority over the crazed group of civilians in the harbor has led to violence. I hear gunshots now in the port even as I write this, I can only imagine how many thousands are trying to hijack their own ship out of Greece, or how many battles have been fought, or people killed over anything that floated. I don't think there is any way we can ever calm these people, not when we could hear the inhuman screeches of the Chimera that are approaching.

**Lamia , Greece - January 23rd, 1950, **

The generals have finally let us in on their brilliant plan. Attica is to be sealed off, the mountain passes closed by controlled blasts. My colonel vehemently argued against it, millions of civilians were still north of our position, to seal off the passes would be to kill them all. But everyone knows that there was no way to save those people. There was no order in the highways and passes up north, with countless traffic jams and barricades. The refugees were trapped. It was final. What hope could it do now? Macedonia had already shown that mountains are useless at keeping these creatures at bay, aren't we just delaying the inevitable?

**January 25th, 1950**

The charges were detonated today, while our units began digging in by the Mountain pass. We saw it ourselves how the giant chunks of falling rock crushed any civilians unlucky enough to get caught in the blast. Many soldiers in our unit hung their heads down in shame, knowing we had failed. Personally, I had been too numbed by the experience in the last few days to feel anything. Not even relief. I just stared blankly at the North, where all I saw were the dozens of black pillars of smoke from what used to be our cities. We were downwind, our position, and the smell seemed to convey everything that had happened. Ash, burning wood and rubber, rotting flesh….

**Thermopylae, January 26th, 1950**

The Generals were right. This was something we had never seen before. Instead of the simply fortifying the pass, as the Spartans had done, we dug into the mountains. They must have been working on it ever since the first word of the Russian invasion. It is a large underground military complex, complete with living quarters and supplies to last us a lifetime. We had a British attaché, colonel Brenner, explain to us that this was based off of the design for the British Southern Command. My comrades are still skeptical as to whether we can actually stop the monsters with this, but no army in history has ever been able to attack inside a mountain. We had everything, booby traps laid out at the entrances, narrow tunnels with clear fields of fire for the defenders. Almost every advantage. For the first time in weeks, I feel some hope coming back. I can't wait to see how many Chimera we can kill with this place.

**January 28th, 1950. Thermopylae underground complex**

We've almost completed the transfer of all allied forces into the underground base. From miles around I see columns of tanks and supply trucks make their way in. Troops from all over the Balkans and Europe are joining us. It is an alliance we thought would never exist, We see the remnants of the Polish armored corps from Manstein's failed assault, the surviving Hungarian and Rumanian regiments that got away from the 'bloody danube' incident. Almost fifty thousand men. I see Serbs, Kroats, Bosnians, Greeks and Turks all working together against the common enemy. It won't be long now…..The north has become mysteriously quiet in the last few days, no signs of civilians or Chimera. Nothing.

**January 31st, 1950**

We've received devastating news from the North. Thessalonica has fallen, along with over one million refugees. Many of the men, myself include, are thinking of our own families in Athens, who are still waiting their turn for evacuation. I try not to think of it, I can only pray that they were selected for the next batch of ships leaving the harbour. Either way, I will do my best to hold them off here, as will every man in my battalion.

**February 1, 1950**

The silence has ended. They've resumed their advance.

The first waves of Chimera attack our mountain defenses. Our dug in artillery and tanks make short work of the first wave, firing from our hidden positions inside the mountain. Even from this distance, we see the waves of Robotic stalkers and goliaths succumb to our shells. We cheer, even though some of the Rumanian soldiers say this is only just the beginning. I can scarcely credit this. How can anything survive such an attack, let alone continue to come at us?!

**February 4th, 1950**

The waves keep on coming and coming. Already several of our dugouts and artillery positions have been overwhelmed. Colonel Brenner is advising that we abandon all our surface pillboxes to retreat deeper into the base, lure them into the mountain where we have more advantages. It might work, but that would mean abandoning all our tanks and heavy artillery on the surface. It would have to be an infantryman's battle from now on. Deep inside the tunnels. I don't agree with this decision, but I must obey orders nevertheless. My platoon packs up our equipment and anything we can carry and we run towards the steel doors that lead into the complex.

I see Brenner at the tunnel entrance, right as the last of our men abandon the surface positions and scrambled deeper into the base. I don't think I'll ever forget his face as he detonated the charges in his hands. Almost like it would be the last time we would see the surface again. We didn't have to speak to each other to know, even as he pressed the button that sealed us within the complex.

At least those creatures can't get through here.

**February 7th, 1950**

The surface fighting has stopped. Either the Chimera have wiped out all the soldiers who didn't make it inside or they left the area to sweep the south. We don't know. For the past few days I can't help but think of the fate of the people in Athens and the Peloponnese. We were supposed to hold them, instead, we became trapped ourselves. We thought we were safe, but the last few days we've been hearing scrapping sounds and monstrous howls coming from the caved in entrances around our base. The things are persistent, they are digging their way through us. Rock by Rock. Brenner is advising us that we prepare our weapons for the coming days…

**February 9th, 1950**

Tunnel warfare is another war in itself, an underground war. People asked me if I had a death wish. Why would anybody want to go into a tunnel? I don't know. I suppose we thought it was the one way we could hide and fight back against those monsters, to buy the cities time to evacuate. We were right in one sense, but when it came to giving us advantages, the tunnels might have ended up being our tombs.

The first chimera broke through the rock today, and we've had gun battles light up in all the upper passageways. It is terrifying fighting these things in the darkness, especially with those huge four legged monstrosities climbing the walls and jumping at you from the ceiling.

Our team also discovered something while on patrol today, something that made our entire defensive plan fall apart in an instant. While patrolling tunnel B, our men had found a section of it was missing. Not just missing, but dug completely through. It was a new tunnel, shaped like it was burrowed through with a drill. But how was this possible? We've never had any machines that could do it so quickly, so effectively. The walls of the cavern are slimy with some kind of pus. What the hell are we facing?

**February 10th, 1950**

We lost the upper three levels today as the Chimera launched a full scale assault through their own tunnels. Brenner himself gave the order as we set the pre-laid barrels of gasoline on fire. Torching the entire upper tunnels to consume the Chimera, and our own screaming wounded men. Our platoon had our fair of shootouts today as well, and a few of the men got wounded. If not from the Chimeran rifles, then from the concussion of the guns in such a narrow space. Burst eardrums and bloodied noses are becoming common among us.

The Chimera are also employing a terrifying new weapon against us. Some gun that can shoot through any solid matter. This practically nullifies any advantages the walls and tunnels give us. What's the use of hiding behind something if the enemy can just shoot through it?

**February 11, 1950**

The Chimera are getting smarter. Not only are they sending their faster and more agile fighters in, they are planting traps. One of my friends, Boris, came across a tunnel full of pulsating sacs of flesh. We warned him to keep his distance, but the second he got too close, they exploded, and one of those spider monsters eviscerated him on the spot. We had to burn the tunnel down with the flamethrower. At least we shot Boris in the head before we proceeded to burn the whole thing down. That alone is a mercy.

The last of the upper levels had fallen, over half the army gone. There was no way of telling how many have survived. The gun battles are raging continuously, all day and into the night. We haven't had a single moment of quiet since the Chimera broke through. Only screams and gunshots.

**February 12, 1950**

The place is a lot more quieter now. We're guessing the Chimera had cleared out the other parts of the base. My platoon tries to catch some sleep, but we keep getting interrupted by this sound of laughter echoing through the base. We figured one of the guys has finally lost it. It won't be long before the Chimera shuts him up.

**February 13, 1950**

Our food, water and ammunition are running low at this point, pretty much non-existent. The men barely have the energy to stand even as the Chimera pick us apart room by room, chamber by chamber. I think the fight's gone out of them. I haven't seen Colonel Brenner for hours now since his visit to the other Chamber. And again at night, we're treated again to more crazed laughter. I swear to god if I get out of this alive I will feed him to a Chimera myself!

**February 14, 1950**

No food or water left. Ammunition has almost run out. The men are becoming agitated now, not only by the crazies around the base, but also because of the lack of food and rest. Fist fights are breaking out among us. Colonel Brenner is still missing. More laughing at night. God Damn those men! Why haven't the Chimera gotten them yet?

**February 15, 1950**

There was no chain of command anymore. Everyone in our sector has given up. Five men died today from gunshot wounds. Some self-inflicted, others from pointless fights. The living quarters have become squalid now. No one is cleaning up or bothering to bathe. The floor's starting to pile up with Human waste as well. I think the laughter is starting to get at some people. One of the men snapped when he heard one of the soldiers chuckle, blew his head off with his assault rifle. No one seemed to care. I hear crying and gunshots at night from the other rooms as well.

**February 16, 1950**

We found the source of the laughter. One of our patrols through the corridors found a lone soldier in a warehouse, surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies in a warehouse complex. We found what he was doing, around him were corpses of these Chimeran insects. Colonel Brenner's body was also in the room, completely stripped of his flesh. We shot the grinning bastard in the head and burned the whole room and the corpses.

I don't know how much more of this I can take!

**February 17th, 1950**

It is quiet today. No more sound. No more fights. No more shooting. Few of us alive. There is plenty of food now.

**February 18th, 1950**

Food ran out again. So we shot sarge in the head. God rest his soul.

**February 18th, 1950**

Sounds. Sounds banging on the steel door, snarls, growls. Something heavy hitting it, bending the metal like it's trying to get in. The men don't seem to mind.

It is beautiful.


	30. Deliverance - Day 4 : India consumed

**Day 4: Operation Deliverance July 14th, 1951.**

**[Word from England grows more dire by the second. The Chimera have mounted a full scale assault on our remaining expeditionary forces in London. Northern and Southern Command have both fallen and the last remnants of the American and British forces are holed up in the capital. It is a last ditch effort to uncover the secrets of the Chimera tower and despite sending in every available reserve. It seems the Chimera are overwhelming our forces through sheer numbers. Shakil Sandrudeen of the 5th Native Army shakes his head as we observe the dispatches coming from the mainland. From his experiences in the Asian campaign, he tells me the battle is already over. As the navy prepares to disembark, he agrees to an interview during one of our breaks.]**

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><p><strong>What was the situation like in India before the Arrival of the Chimera?<strong>

Like any situation around the world at the time. It was not very stable. The end of the great world war left the country with great expectations that the allies would follow through with their promises for political self determination. At the time, we thought that what had applied to the states of the former German empire would apply. Sadly that was not the case for India. I've lost track of the number of protests, peaceful and violent, that had occurred and the hundreds of lives lost.

It was also made worse by the fact that the winters were getting longer. Some global phenomenon that was happening everywhere, but it hit our country the hardest. We've had more floods, monsoons and sub zero winters that killed off thousands of farmers and animals. It was an unprecedented disaster and it added more to the political instability.

**Were there any signs of a Chimeran invasion similar to Europe?**

Not really. Not many of our people. At least, in my hometown of Bombay, ever ventured that far north. We've heard about the disappearances. Of English hikers and the occasional live stock, but it was routine. We never expected any invasion. Not from the north. The Himalayas are an impassable barrier. Even the great Mongol invasions could sweep past it. It was certainly the last thing we expected.

**But didn't the invasion of Europe occur before the Asian attacks?**

We knew there was an attack before. But the government kept a very tight lip on the situation. Even your own American troops had no idea what they were fighting until their commanders sent them into the meat grinder. From what they told us, the Russian has broken through the great wall, spilling into Poland. It sounded logical. The Europeans have been tearing at each other's throats for centuries, what else is new? It was just the start of another great war for us. More death, more destruction, more false promises.

Our situation wasn't improved either when high command started sending an large amount of Indian troops to the middle east, to protect European interests there. At first, my comrades cheered at the fact that the British and French were bleeding themselves dry against the enemy, but few realized that this meant we would be the next in line to be shipped off. By the time the Chimera had burst through the Himalayas, our country was basically stripped bare of weapons and troops. This is no exaggeration. How else can you explain that the Chimera had managed to conquer the country in a matter of days?

**How did the invasion start off?**

Unlike the European theatre, which began with familiar trench warfare. The Chimera simply steamrolled through the country. Their giant mechanical goliaths just fired their biological weapons at each city, infecting the population within minutes, and then proceeding to the next.

The Chimeran advance was certainly more efficient in India than in Europe. Where large industrialized armies and railroads allowed the allies to plan defensive lines more efficiently. In India, there was no hope. Even if we wanted to plan a defensive line or evacuate a city. The railroads in the country were few and sparse. We had to use mules and whatever trucks we had left to move our equipment. By that time it was too late, if you heard the sound of a Chimeran missile, the road would become a sea of corpses within minutes. It was quite an unnerving sight, and soon became common place to see at least a hundred bodies every kilometer you drove. A thousand if you were near a population centre. These were people of all ages and castes, carrying whatever possessions they had with them. Millions were literally infected within minutes of an attack. This was repeated, city after city.

That was not the worst part. By nightfall, a significant portion of them had either already been converted, or were shipped off to one of those infection centres. It was these hordes of infected that finished off what was left of our men in the south. We simply didn't have enough ammunition for all of those creatures.

**Weren't there any defensive plans made by the British?**

No. Not even they could anticipate the invasion. But that wasn't the worst part. Even at this point the British were still stripping India of all her equipment and troops! To be sent to the Middle East and Europe. Although I may count myself lucky for being one of them. Removing the troops in the middle of an invasion was a heinous crime in our eyes, and the British high command were already risking Shiva's wrath through their actions. I can already say that the karma of those people are tainted for the next thousand generations.

**Some called it an evacuation…**

Then why did they not plan something like this sooner? They had full knowledge of the Chimera for several weeks before they broke into India and China. Huge population centres that provided an irresistible target for them, and they did nothing to defend them! I cannot blame them for failing, but I can blame them for not even trying! Worse, they destroyed more than they saved. There were no civilian evacuation zones, nor lines of retreat. It was all one great mindless race for resources. The army, before 'evacuating' a city, made it a policy to destroy all infrastructure and horde supplies, to deny them to the enemy. It was pointless because we learned too late they didn't use the same 'supplies' as we did. Even worse. It was murder. They left nothing for the refugees that couldn't escape. The more cynical of us believe that they left the population there just to occupy the Chimeran forces long enough to escape. Who am I to judge them? Most of those men were consumed by the invaders anyway. The Chimera were most efficient occupiers, never having to stay at a major population centre for more than a few hours before moving on.

If you want one way to describe the invasion. It was all essentially a race, and both sides took part it in. The British stripped the country bare of Material, the Chimera, of People. It was the last gasp of the occupying empire as they rush to strip the country bare before the Chimera could.

Perhaps that is why some of the the creatures are so ferocious in their battle against your troops**? After all, how many of my fellow countrymen were 'reborn' after the invasion? Who am I to say?

I guess some would call that karma.

_** There have been unconfirmed reports from both Asia and Europe of Chimera mutilating bodies by decapitating, dismembering or disfiguring them after death, usually with slash marks and teeth bites. This suggests that the diseased have been intentionall mutilated by their killers. The frequency of these findings suggests a ritualistic aspect common across chimeran culture. This has also been observed on Chimeran corpses as well. Whether this is a remnant of the former victim's humanity or hardcoded into the Chimeran gene remains to be seen. _


	31. Deliverance - Final Day : Angels?

**Operation Deliverance : Final Day – Angels?**

**[Something miraculous has occurred, something that no one at HQ has been able to explain. For the first time since the record of this war, there is a victory. One second ago, all the switchboards were alight with cries for help and requests for ammunition and reinforcements. The Chimera were on the verge of overwhelming our task force. There was a large blast, an explosion that sent tremors throughout the battlefield, even reaching the channel and sending waves across the entire region...**

**Then silence.**

**The Chimeran tower had somehow been detonated from the inside. Not just wiping out all their forces in London. According to scattered reports from US troops fighting in Scotland and Ireland, all the Chimera in the England within minutes have simply dropped dead. Whether or not this is a repercussion of the tower's destruction…it is still too early to tell. Dr. Malikov, the sole surviving member of the Russian research team who has been researching the Chimera since the beginning, mentions something about the death of the angels as the crew watches the destruction of the tower. I find some time to question him afterwards on these…'angels'.]**

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><p>You must understand that everything I say is at best, a theory. We've yet to fully understand the Chimera despite having conducted research on them for decades. The existence of the angels is something that we've just discovered, and with them, a million more new questions are popping up every day.<p>

**What are they doctor?**

**[Malikov chuckles.]** Ironic that we call them 'angels' don't you believe? We were all brought up on the notion that angels are supposed to help mankind towards salvation. The will of god….

The first sightings took place after the fall of Paris, when the Chimera suddenly poured through Western Germany and overran the Rhine defense perimeter. They were scattered reports at first, but there have been sightings of a new form of Chimera 'directing' enemy troops, so to speak. Perhaps up to date, they are the most advanced form of Chimera we have discovered.

Angels are perhaps the closest we have to discovering the 'original strain' of the Chimera. They look nothing like anything we've seen before, and we've no idea where they came from.

Essentially, they resembling giant flying lizards. We believe they've gained this ability through the metallic heating apparatus attached to their backs. We've only found out now that the British army had captured on during the invasion of the U.K. That...thing, was probably how the Chimera were able to locate Southern Command. It was calling to them.

**You've mentioned an original strain? What do you mean by that?**

Although it is one of SPRA's theories that the Chimera were not of this Earth, we also have reason to believe that they've been here for some time.

The towers we've recently seen them excavate in every major city thus far, they couldn't have built them underground secretly. They must have been buried beneath the earth for at least millions of years to avoid being discovered by humans. Samples we've taken from the towers in Paris have been carbon dated back to at least 60 million years.

**So you're saying, the Chimera pre-date mankind?**

As hard as it is to believe. Yes, I believe they do. I'm also led to believe that perhaps some of the dinosaur fossils we've discovered over the years aren't really 'dinosaurs' at all, but the evidence. I cannot say this is true or not, at this point in time, that speculation is all but useless.

**But how does that explain Humans being able to become the dominant species on the planet? Why has the Chimera chosen to resurface now?**

If I knew the answers my friend, then this war might have been over by now. Something may have caused the Chimera to vanish before the ice age. It could have been war, a plague or another mysterious cause altogether. There is no way for us to know. What we do know however, is that the virus itself does not seem natural. In a way, it seems designed to specifically attack and modify human genes and DNA. It is a frightening possibility that all the events we have been witnessing this past decade have been planned millions of years in advance. It seems impossible, but I can see few other reasons.

**Can you tell me about SPRA?**

The Special Research and Projects Administration was founded in 1908, right when the first sightings of the Chimera were reported. Since then, our purpose was to find ways to combat the Chimeran threat, in the form of vaccines, weapons and armor.

**Are there any attempts to try and counter the Chimean virus?**

It's been one of SPRA's main projects and perhaps, its original purpose. We've obtained samples of the virus over the years from Chimeran conversation centers, and have been testing them for a viable vaccine. But unfortunately, the virus seems to have a 100% fatality rate.

**If SPRA had been in existence for so long, why didn't it contact the other countries to form a united front? Or at least share information.**

I believe that decision was made by the president and his joint chiefs. The isolationist league in your country, has profound influence over your politics I can imagine.

Even if we tried to share the information, who would believe us? What could we have done? Despite our advancements, the best we have are still conventional weapons I'm afraid. In the end, I believe we may have done more harm than good, especially with project Daedalus…..

[Malikov pauses]

**Project…Daedulus?**

I'm sorry my friend….[Malikov eyes the door nervously] I'm not really at liberty to answer that question. For your own good...i don't think we should be talking anymore...

**Before I could say any more, two US black ops soldiers have entered the cabin, politely requesting the doctor to leave. They give me a hostile stare as they escort the doctor away. Leaving me with my intel reports...**

**[The Battle of London is the first recorded victory over the Chimeran forces. With the destruction of the main tower, all the Chimera in the British mainland have been defeated. Yet it was not without its costs. From an estimated 10,000 U.S rangers who landed in England, less than a thousand survive... It won't be long now before we set off back to the U.S.A. But Doctor Malikov's last words have me uneasy.]**

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><p>And that's all folks, the last of what I've written for this Oral History. Whether or not this continues I will have to see what I can do for the remaining parts of the resistance universe. But until then, thanks for the encouragement and comments :)<p>

DSVII


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